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Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research,...
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Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 August 2023) | Viewed by 21787

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Maja Korać

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Affiliate Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Interests: conflict; gender and displacement; gender; migration and integration; refugee studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

This Special Issue of Genealogy welcomes articles on the topic: "Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production". Contributors are invited to reflect upon the intersections between their research on violence, war and/or displacement, and their own life trajectories. How does research about socio-political processes that produce injustice, cause violence, and inflict pain, impact those who do research? How do the lives of social scientists shape their research interests and/or their methodological approaches? How do gender and other identities, value systems and politics, embedded and embodied in the lives of researchers shape their scholarly work? How do the lives, agency, and resistance of research participants who have experienced violence, war and/or displacement, enable scholarly understanding and shape the process of knowing? What does it mean to do research and engage in knowledge production about socio-political processes that produce injustice and generate pain with which researchers have personal experiences?  Or in places they came from? By exploring a plurality of perspectives and how they influence one another, this Special Issue engages with the question of knowledge co-production from different standpoints and lived experiences.

Although feminist standpoint theories and related epistemologies have influenced certain niche areas of scholarship in the past few decades, many aspects of the research process in most social science fields remain unspoken about, silenced and hidden. The role of emotions, gender and other identities, political commitments and relationships in shaping research are seldom at the center of scholarly attention, particularly in studies about conflict, peace, and displacement. This Special Issue engages with multidimensional understanding of research by deploying feminist, multi-systems, and relational approaches to doing research, creating knowledge, and contributing to positive social change.

This Special Issue welcomes both essay and narrative forms of writing or a combination of the two to accommodate different research and life contexts, as well as enquiry approaches.

All papers submitted to this Special Issue will be published free of charge.

Some of the potential areas of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • positionality in research
  • lived experiences and life stories
  • (war/state) violence
  • displacement/implacement
  • ethnic/national/indigenous/racial identity
  • resistance and agency
  • embodied knowledge
  • epistemic violence
  • coloniality of power and knowledge

Tentative completion schedule:

  • Abstract submission deadline: March 2023
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: April 2023
  • Full manuscript deadline: July 2023

Dr. Maja Korać
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 231 KiB  
Article
Hosts, Again: From Conditional Inclusion and Liberal Censorship to Togetherness and Creative/Critical Refugee Epistemologies
by Saida Hodžić
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 18; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010018 - 16 Feb 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1976
Abstract
In this experimental text that critically juxtaposes autoethnographic narration, reflection, and analysis with theoretical engagements, I suggest that the power dynamics that diminish and dispossess the lives of refugees and other displaced people also constrain and censor critical refugee epistemologies. Refugees are frequently [...] Read more.
In this experimental text that critically juxtaposes autoethnographic narration, reflection, and analysis with theoretical engagements, I suggest that the power dynamics that diminish and dispossess the lives of refugees and other displaced people also constrain and censor critical refugee epistemologies. Refugees are frequently impelled to speak, implored to speak, coached to speak, interrogated and ordered to speak, but on the condition that we consent to having our voices policed. Our narratives are welcomed if they affirm the humanitarian liberal order, but the knowledge we possess challenges it. Presented as benevolent and caring, the incessant demands for refugee stories and trauma erotics are also mechanisms of putting refugees in place: they assign the refugee a subject position of a conditionally accepted narrator who is refused authorship and self-possession. Our narratives fail to count as knowledge unless they are converted into writing by citizen ghost writers or coauthors. And when we refuse to recite trauma stories and instead disrupt the order of things by critically analyzing violent regimes of refuge and liberal complicity, we are censored. Refugees have things to say as ethnographers of their own lives, analysts of upside-down mobility, and critics of violent bureaucracies. This knowledge is needed and wanted. Rather than orienting our work to liberal publics, we are creating alternative, self-authorized structures that uphold displaced people as knowledgeable and world-building subjects, as people able to host others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
31 pages, 402 KiB  
Article
Listening to, Reconstructing, and Writing about Stories of Violence: A Research Journey Amidst Personal Loss
by Kristine Andra Avram
Genealogy 2024, 8(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8010014 - 3 Feb 2024
Viewed by 2316
Abstract
This article explores the interplay between my life and research on responsibility in the context of (past) collective violence and state repression in Romania, my country of origin. Reflecting on the five-year research process, I delve into my multiple and shifting positionalities during [...] Read more.
This article explores the interplay between my life and research on responsibility in the context of (past) collective violence and state repression in Romania, my country of origin. Reflecting on the five-year research process, I delve into my multiple and shifting positionalities during data collection, analysis, and presentation, pointing to the fluid identities of researchers along a continuum in which their backgrounds, professional roles, as well as dynamic negotiations in ‘the field’ and personal experiences intertwine and affect research at every stage. In particular, I explore the impact of my personal experience of loss and grief after the sudden death of my mother on my research, revealing its influence on reconstructing and writing about stories of violence. In doing so, research unfolds as a journey where personal and professional lives merge, showcasing knowledge production as an inherently subjective endeavor. Building on this, I advocate for recognizing the influence of emotions and personal experiences on narrative interpretations as well as for considering the intertwining between research and personal life’s as central facets of positionality and reflexivity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
10 pages, 268 KiB  
Article
Gender Justice and Feminist Politics: Decolonizing Collaborative Research
by Dolores Figueroa Romero
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 95; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040095 - 29 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1933
Abstract
The most prominent social effects of the drug war in Mexico are the criminalization of poverty and increased rates of feminicide. Feminist academics and community leaders have been developing and working hand in hand to find the most appropriate methods to document gender-based [...] Read more.
The most prominent social effects of the drug war in Mexico are the criminalization of poverty and increased rates of feminicide. Feminist academics and community leaders have been developing and working hand in hand to find the most appropriate methods to document gender-based violence and feminicide to shed light on the impunity that hides the systemic dismissal of women’s lives. This essay presents a critical analysis of my own positionality as a feminist and academic ally in building a collaborative research alliance with indigenous women leaders who are politically engaged in the production of knowledge from an intersectional perspective that adequately reflects the matrix of violence that affects the lives of indigenous women in urban and rural areas. This process has been fruitful and promising, although it has also entailed challenges and contradictions arising from disparate meanings of gender justice and the lack of encounter of feminist/indigenous politics of resistance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
16 pages, 301 KiB  
Article
Transformations: A Personal History of Introducing Complicité into Academic Life and Learning Communities
by Nergis Canefe
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040089 - 18 Nov 2023
Viewed by 2189
Abstract
This essay documents my three-decade-long journey of connections and resultant transformations between scholarly knowledge and artistic production in my work. In reinvestigating my history with stage and visual arts, I trace the relationship between traditionally ‘alien’ practices and academic understandings of societal and [...] Read more.
This essay documents my three-decade-long journey of connections and resultant transformations between scholarly knowledge and artistic production in my work. In reinvestigating my history with stage and visual arts, I trace the relationship between traditionally ‘alien’ practices and academic understandings of societal and political mass violence and invite the reader to reconsider what academia stands for in order to engage with borderless histories of conflict, violence, and displacement. This essay dwells on how artistic engagement is both a personal and a profoundly political process through which the experience of violence is communicated through thoughts, emotions, hopes, and expressions of trauma. There are also significant ethical concerns present concerning the portrayal of violence, death, and suffering, which the paper discusses under the aegis of ethics of witnessing as responsibility. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
26 pages, 362 KiB  
Article
Life History Research and the Violence of War: Experiencing Binary Thinking on Pain and Privilege, Being and Knowing
by Maja Korac and Cindy Horst
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040086 - 14 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1684
Abstract
This reflective piece explores the ‘I am the evidence’ side of the process of knowing. It offers the story of the Yugoslav wars of secession (1991–1999) and their human consequences from the point of view of someone who refuses to surrender ground to [...] Read more.
This reflective piece explores the ‘I am the evidence’ side of the process of knowing. It offers the story of the Yugoslav wars of secession (1991–1999) and their human consequences from the point of view of someone who refuses to surrender ground to the socio-political conditions of life in which ethno-national and cultural differences have to be transgressed. The core of this article is based on the life history of Maja Korac, developed in conversation with Cindy Horst. It approaches the intersections of her life and research from a narrative research perspective. We engage in a contrapuntal discussion of how Maja’s family background, gender, social class, and ethnic/national identity affected her life choices in terms of political engagement, research trajectories, and mobility paths. In doing so, we follow Barad’s argument that we do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are part of the world. Hence, our discussion and analysis enables the multivocal articulation of the interweaving of personal, collective, geopolitical, and historical contexts in Maja’s research. This process made Maja feel visible after a very long time, because it opened the possibility of (re)gaining the vocabulary to express who she is, and how it has been for her as a human being within a professional role and identity, as well as within an ascribed ethnic identity during a specific historic time. This opportunity for understanding and knowing while being inside the world allowed Maja to repossess her life and identity—individual, professional, collective. It also re-opened the possibility to challenge further the notion of ‘true knowledge’ that is presumably based on ‘methodologically sound paradigms’, all of which exclude the researcher as a person, as who, as a life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
14 pages, 313 KiB  
Article
Re-Search on the Hyphen: (Re)writing the Fragmented Self within Contexts of Displacement
by Lina Fadel
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040080 - 24 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1923
Abstract
In responding to the call for exploring and explicating aspects of the research process that remain unspoken about in most social science fields, this narrative asks deceptively simple questions: what does it mean to carry out research as an academic with a lived [...] Read more.
In responding to the call for exploring and explicating aspects of the research process that remain unspoken about in most social science fields, this narrative asks deceptively simple questions: what does it mean to carry out research as an academic with a lived experience of displacement, loss and pain? What are the methodological choices available to me as a migrant scholar? What does it really mean to write (about) the displaced-turned-emplaced self from the margin—myself being a case in point—within contexts of loss and displacement? My aim is to present a personal narrative that is uniquely mine, a story that may work with or against what is thought to be the official story. I defend the use of fragments, theoretically and methodologically, to avoid the homogenisation of narratives and assumptions about how research is carried out, how knowledge(s) are produced and reproduced, and who has the power to produce them. Thus, building on established scholarship cutting across various fields and guided by postcolonial and postmodernist theories, I hope to unpack the tensions and possibilities inherent in thinking about borders and positionality in academia (when the researcher dwells at the margins), identity, its fragmentation, and its entanglement with questions of decoloniality, narrative and voice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
11 pages, 278 KiB  
Article
Conversation with My Classmates: Displacement, War, and Survival
by Eva Mikuska
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040075 - 10 Oct 2023
Viewed by 2087
Abstract
Serbia is a country with a long tradition of emigration. The increase in the number of displaced people sharply rose in 1992 when all the diplomatic options to preserve Yugoslavia had failed. The ensuing ethnic conflict resulted in mass mobilization by young adults [...] Read more.
Serbia is a country with a long tradition of emigration. The increase in the number of displaced people sharply rose in 1992 when all the diplomatic options to preserve Yugoslavia had failed. The ensuing ethnic conflict resulted in mass mobilization by young adults who were required to go to war, mainly against their will. The main purpose of the paper is twofold: to draw attention to the key challenges that displacement plays on individuals and to show how traumatic events, such as the war in Ukraine, can mobilize historical traumas. To elicit deeper and new understandings of how displacement impacts people, conversations with my elementary school classmates of Hungarian ethnic origin, including those who were serving the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) between 1991 and 1992, were analysed through the lens of the author’s autoethnographic positioning. It shows how life stories are co-produced through narrative inquiry and, by ‘co-reflecting’ on the past, it shows how they are simultaneously positioned within social categories of intersectionality, such as gender, social inequality, stayed and displaced. These reflections offer a broader understanding of how qualitative research can enrich existing knowledge of the effect of this specific conflict, and ethnic conflict in general. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
10 pages, 281 KiB  
Article
Indigenous Research: The Path towards Mapuchization
by María Gloria Cayulef
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040070 - 25 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1388
Abstract
This article explores the process of decolonizing and indigenizing research from my perspective as a Mapuche woman. During this process, I examine how to approach and analyze colonial and patriarchal archives through an indigenous lens, leading me to consider a transformation of my [...] Read more.
This article explores the process of decolonizing and indigenizing research from my perspective as a Mapuche woman. During this process, I examine how to approach and analyze colonial and patriarchal archives through an indigenous lens, leading me to consider a transformation of my work into an indigenous research endeavor. In this undertaking, I delve into the interplay of affective and political dimensions within indigenous research, recognizing them as catalysts for resistance and knowledge construction. I emphasize the significance of first-person research as a powerful means of empowering marginalized individuals and validating personal and collective experiences, countering Eurocentric epistemologies that perpetuate colonial and epistemic violence. Furthermore, I advocate for the recovery of marginalized knowledge and the integration of native epistemologies. As a third step in the process of decolonizing and indigenizing my research, I introduce the concept of ‘Mapuchization of research.’ This idea represents a process of reconnection with the ancestral knowledge of my people, where past and present come together. It intertwines several dimensions, including political, epistemological, and ontological, with the aim of contributing to indigenous research methodology, based on the knowledge found in Mapuche culture and history. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
16 pages, 659 KiB  
Article
Lost in Translation? Agency and Incommensurability in the Transnational Travelling of Discourses of Sexualized Harm
by Alison Crosby
Genealogy 2023, 7(3), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7030069 - 21 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1589
Abstract
This article argues for incommensurability, incoherence, and difference as the grounds through which to think about sexualized harm and its redress. It seeks to remove the “me” from the “too”, and to instead consider the structures of white supremacy and neocolonial power that [...] Read more.
This article argues for incommensurability, incoherence, and difference as the grounds through which to think about sexualized harm and its redress. It seeks to remove the “me” from the “too”, and to instead consider the structures of white supremacy and neocolonial power that have facilitated white Western feminists’ ability to participate in shaping a hegemonic discourse of sexualized harm and its transnational travelling. The article traces the author’s personal genealogy of rights work in the context of shifts in international jurisprudence in relation to wartime sexualized violence. It looks back and reflects on an eight-year feminist participatory action research project that accompanied 54 Mayan women protagonists who survived a multiplicity of harm, including sexual violence, during Guatemala’s 36-year genocidal war. The project documented the protagonists’ engagement with transitional justice mechanisms, including a paradigmatic court case and a national reparations program, as part of their struggles for redress. The concept of “protagonism” is used to understand agency in the aftermath of genocidal violence as relational, co-constructed, and imbued with power. The meaning of sexualized harm is always “in-translation” between Western and Mayan onto-epistemological positionings, as Mayan women seek to suture land-body-territory in their multifaceted strategies for redress that engage but always exceed rights regimes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
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10 pages, 238 KiB  
Essay
On Being Too Close to It
by Azra Hromadžić
Genealogy 2023, 7(4), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7040076 - 12 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1887
Abstract
This essay explores the dominant expectations of “objectivity” and “distance” that continue to penetrate classrooms and academic journals, and conferences and public spaces. In the process, I argue, they (re)produce everyday violences that stretch their slippery tentacles, keeping in suspension those who think, [...] Read more.
This essay explores the dominant expectations of “objectivity” and “distance” that continue to penetrate classrooms and academic journals, and conferences and public spaces. In the process, I argue, they (re)produce everyday violences that stretch their slippery tentacles, keeping in suspension those who think, feel, write, and relate otherwise. In order to trace the lived effects of these processes, I focus here on several instances, their articulations and permutations, where I and those close to me were reminded, suspected, even accused—jokingly, scoldingly, teasingly, lovingly, and/or violently—of “being too close to it.” Here, “it” stands for a geographical location (“the field”), lived experience, and particular sensibility, struggle, and commitment that comes from being proximate—nationally/ethnically, geographically, politically, and affectively—to the field/home. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Stories of Violence, War, and Displacement: Intersections of Life, Research, and Knowledge Production)
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