Ambivalent reflections on violence and peacebuilding: Activist research in Croatia and the wider post-Yugoslav space1
Ambivalent reflections on violence and peacebuilding: Activist research in Croatia and the wider post-Yugoslav space1
The chapter explores theoretical, political and ethical challenges inherent in activist research in conflict and post-conflict environments, focusing on Croatia and the wider post-Yugoslav space. Framed in terms of ‘ambivalence’, ‘positionality’ and ‘reflexivity’, the chapter revisits themes which were especially important in the wars of the Yugoslav succession: the ‘projectisation’ of NGOs; the relationship between ‘the real’ and ‘the virtual’; the role of external actors within a ‘new humanitarianism’; the over-emphasis on medicalised understanding of ‘trauma’; and the limits and possibilities of anti-nationalist movements in times of nationalist mobilisation. The chapter emphasises the importance of multi-voiced ethnography, a conscious post-colonial positioning and a stance of deep humility as preconditions for activist research to open up new arenas of possibility, struggle and change.
Keywords: activism, research, Croatia, post-Yugoslav space, reflexivity
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