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War Veterans in Postwar SituationsThe “Recycled” Militiaman: An Examination of the Postwar Reconversion of Four Former Members of a Serbian Armed Group

War Veterans in Postwar Situations: The “Recycled” Militiaman: An Examination of the Postwar... [How do former militiamen who have participated in mass violence “recycle” once the war is over? Do they reintegrate into the postwar “normalized” day-to-day framework of social, political, and community relations? Or does the violence experienced during the war transfer into the postwar context? And if so, can we speak of a violent habitus? This chapter, an ethnographic study of the post-war reconversion of four former Serbian militiamen who took part in mass violence in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, underlines the need to view such conversion experiences from a dual angle: collective and individual. From the collective point of view, we find a reconfiguration of the community’s social economy with a tendency toward a new order giving these former members of armed bands the status of a local elite. Individually, the vestiges of war are reflected in the difficulty these men have making sense of their personal investment in an unjustifiable past, in addition to which some also suffer from the continued presence of these war experiences within. This becomes apparent in their ambivalent relation to violence.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

War Veterans in Postwar SituationsThe “Recycled” Militiaman: An Examination of the Postwar Reconversion of Four Former Members of a Serbian Armed Group

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2012
ISBN
978-1-349-34417-8
Pages
157 –176
DOI
10.1057/9781137109743_8
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[How do former militiamen who have participated in mass violence “recycle” once the war is over? Do they reintegrate into the postwar “normalized” day-to-day framework of social, political, and community relations? Or does the violence experienced during the war transfer into the postwar context? And if so, can we speak of a violent habitus? This chapter, an ethnographic study of the post-war reconversion of four former Serbian militiamen who took part in mass violence in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, underlines the need to view such conversion experiences from a dual angle: collective and individual. From the collective point of view, we find a reconfiguration of the community’s social economy with a tendency toward a new order giving these former members of armed bands the status of a local elite. Individually, the vestiges of war are reflected in the difficulty these men have making sense of their personal investment in an unjustifiable past, in addition to which some also suffer from the continued presence of these war experiences within. This becomes apparent in their ambivalent relation to violence.]

Published: Nov 3, 2015

Keywords: Armed Group; Symbolic Capital; International Tribunal; Mass Violence; Combat Sport

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