Innocence and victimhood : gender, nation, and women's activism in postwar bosnia-herzegovina /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Helms, Elissa.
Imprint:Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.
Description:1 online resource
Language:English
Series:Critical human rights
Critical human rights.
Subject:Women -- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Women political activists -- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Women human rights workers -- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
War victims -- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Civil Rights.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Human Rights.
Social conditions
War victims.
Women.
Women human rights workers.
Women political activists.
Frau.
Kriegsopfer
Menschenrecht
Politisches Handeln
women -- social conditions -- human rights -- war victims -- nationalism -- NGOs -- war crimes -- Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Social conditions.
Bosnia and Herzegovina -- History -- 1992-
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosna i Hercegovina
Electronic books.
Electronic books.
History.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11209722
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780299295530
0299295532
9780299295547
0299295540
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Print version record.
Other form:Print version: Helms, Elissa. Innocence and victimhood 9780299295547
Description
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.
Physical Description:1 online resource
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9780299295530
0299295532
9780299295547
0299295540