1st Edition
Healing and Peacebuilding after War Transforming Trauma in Bosnia and Herzegovina
This book brings together multiple perspectives to examine the strengths and limitations of efforts to promote healing and peacebuilding after war, focusing on the aftermath of the traumatic armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This book begins with a simple premise: trauma that is not transformed is transferred. Drawing on multidisciplinary insights from academics, peace practitioners and trauma experts, this book examines the limitations of our current strategies for promoting healing and peacebuilding after war while offering inroads into best practices to prevent future violence through psychosocial trauma recovery and the healing of memories. The contributions create a conversation that allows readers to critically rethink the deeper roots and mechanisms of trauma created by the war.
Collectively, the authors provide strategic recommendations to policymakers, peace practitioners, donors and international organizations engaged in work in Bosnia and Herzegovina – strategies that can be applied to other countries rebuilding after war.
This volume will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, social psychology, Balkan politics and International Relations in general.
1. Introduction Julianne Funk
Part I: Incorporating Trauma Healing into Peacebuilding Practice
2. Fundamentals of Trauma: Confronting the myths and widening the spectrum for peacebuilding Nancy Good and Julianne Funk
3. Holistic Healing: A Case for Integrating Trauma Recovery and Peacebuilding Kristina Hook
4. Building Peace in Complex Contexts of Psychosocial Trauma: An Integrative Framework Barry Hart
Part II: How to Remember and Tell Stories of Trauma
5. ‘I Can(not) Remember’: The Creation of Collective Narratives in Post-war Bosnia & Herzegovina Alma Jeftić
6. Creating a Multidirectional Memory for Healing in the Former Yugoslavia Stephanie C. Edwards
7. Remembering Side by Side: Transforming Relationships through Storytelling Edita Ćolo Zahirović
Part III: Women’s Resilience
8. Victim or Survivor? Choosing Identity after Wartime Sexual Violence Zilka Spahić Šiljak
9. ‘The War Changed Me’: Bosnian Women, Resilience and the Search for Peace Marie E. Berry
10. From Subjects of Stories to Agents of Change: Countering Dominant Discourses of Women and Peacebuilding Jessica M. Smith
Part IV: From Justice to Artistic Expression: Practices of Working with Trauma
11. Symbolic Forms of Transitional Justice for Social Restoration in Bosnia & Herzegovina Mina Rauschenbach, Stephan Parmentier and Maarten Van Craen
12. Taking Play Seriously: Creative Processing of Trauma through Expressive Arts Kathryn Mansfield
13. Conclusion Marie Berry
Biography
Julianne Funk is Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), Greece, and Managing Editor of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.
Nancy Good is a trauma therapist and international therapist consultant with The KonTerra Group and Portland Trauma Recovery. For 20 years she was faculty with Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, USA.
Marie E. Berry is Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, USA.
'This collection focuses on collective trauma (as distinguished from individualized trauma, typically associated with PTSD), a social phenomenon that must be addressed in countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that underwent horrendous civil warfare. Chapters advance reasons why a multidisciplinary, multifaceted approach can promote a sustainable peace in BiH, albeit very gradually, where social trauma abounds, stemming from the ethnic cleansing and mass rape of tens of thousands of people in the 1990s. ... Expressing a feminist perspective, most contributors strongly suggest ways in which mental health disciplines can complement efforts to build sustainable reconciliation and peace in traumatized states. Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students.'--P.G. Conway, SUNY College at Oneonta, CHOICE
