Innocence and victimhood : gender, nation, and women's activism in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina / Elissa Helms.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Helms, Elissa.

Series:

Critical human rights.

Critical human rights

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War victims--Bosnia and Hercegovina.

War victims.

Women human rights workers--Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Women human rights workers.

Women political activists--Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Women political activists.

Women--Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Women.

Bosnia and Herzegovina--History--1992-.

Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosnia and Herzegovina--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (348 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wisconsin : University of Wisconsin Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for "ethnic cleansing" and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women's activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society. Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women's activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women's (and men's) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Language and Pronunciation Guide

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Victims and Peacemakers: Contextualizing Representations

Chapter 2. Wartime: Gender, Nationalism, and Sexualized Violence

Chapter 3. The NGO Boom: Women's Organizing and Foreign Intervention in the Wake of War

Chapter 4. The Nationing of Gender: Nationalism, Reconciliation, Feminisms

Chapter 5. Politics Is a Whore: Women and the Political

Chapter 6. Avoidance and Authenticity: The Public Face of Wartime Rape

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780299295530

0299295532

OCLC:

862077720