Abstract
A functioning democracy requires institutional mechanisms to mediate disputes about resources, ideology, and identity. Solidifying such mechanisms, especially in the aftermath of violent conflict, is challenging. How do negotiators and policy makers craft settlements that help mediate these disputes and ensure that democratic processes do not devolve again into violence? A primary challenge of these negotiations revolves around how contested memories of violence are represented. Collective memories represent significant cultural and identity resources that political entrepreneurs can draw on to sustain movement activity. After civil war collective memories are likely to be highly polarized, and features of negotiated settlement (such as territorial administration) systematically constrain access to and availability of collective memory. To test this proposition, this study interrogates the following question: Does territorial control, negotiated at the settlement phase, impact where collective memory is established? To answer this question, I use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map collective memory (operationalized as memorialization) in Bosnia and Northern Ireland. I then model ethnic, party, and administrative controls at the municipal, county, canton, and state levels. In doing so this project examines necessary and sufficient conditions for memorialization, and at what scale these controls matter most. This inquiry makes empirical contributions to the growing body of literature on collective memory, and to methodological debates about the utility of GIS for social science research. It also helps policy makers understand how features of negotiated settlement impact elements of collective memory that are used to strengthen or debilitate subsequent movements toward democratic consolidation.
Presenters
Carli SteelmanStudent, PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame, Armed Forces Americas, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Collective Memory, Geographic Information Systems, Violence
