Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 1952

Living as a white Zimbabwean in the 1990s meant a near-perfect life: your clothes were always clean and ironed, there was always tea in the silver teapot, gins and tonics were served on the verandah, and, in theory at least, black and white lived in harmony. As Mugabe’s presidency turned sour, however, this idyllic and privileged world began to crumble into anarchy. My family and I left to escape the political violence in 2002, and moved to New Zealand. My novel Ngozi draws on these experiences to tell the story of one troubled white family who struggle to stay afloat in the collapsing economy and escalating horror of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The story is told through the eyes of a young white girl, who is partly based on myself. When the farm invasions begin, the violence threatens to destroy the family’s way of life forever. They eventually leave Zimbabwe, but escaping the vengeful ghosts (‘ngozi’) of their past still seems impossible.

This dissertation focuses on Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars and their attempts to secure symbolic and material recognition from the state after losing a series of wars. My main goal is to examine some of the main features of Serbia’s welfare system and to explore the ways in which war veterans negotiated their entitlements and secured access to social care. On a different level, I analyse Serbia’s transformation from a socialist society to a free market economy – a process in which a large part of the veteran population seems to have been caught in the middle, between warfare and welfare. I raised the following questions: (1) in what ways did the Serbian state provide for the population of war veterans, (2) what was the role of VAs in this process, (3) how did the interplay between actors and their position within the local political and economic landscape influence veterans’ prospects for social recognition and access to care, and (4) how did war veterans justify their demands and in what ways did they reproduce or transform the official rhetoric that validated or challenged their privileged position? Therefore, this study is an analysis of the predicaments of Serbian veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars and the ways in which they were constructed, articulated and mobilised as a discourse and tool to differentiate and bestow a particular social group with particular rights to state resources. This was occurring in what I described as zones of ambiguities and unsolved contradictions due to the fact that two decades after post-Yugoslav wars, Serbia still had no official records about the exact number of killed and missing persons, or about the size of its veteran population. This also means that the state officialdom had no information about postwar living conditions of a large portion of its population, which impacted veterans’ and other people’s ideas about nationality, the state and their rights as Serbian citizens. Veterans voiced their discontent with the state and wider society through what I have observed as narratives of multiple lacks and losses that pointed to particular sites of ‘injury’ that affected their sense of dignity. In the process of making their claims for status recognition they competed with other groups in Serbian civil society over their respective positions in a hierarchy of victims in need of state protection. This could be described as a paradoxical process in which subjects seem to oppose the state while replicating forms of state power to gain recognition. I analyse the practices through which war veterans consolidated and communicated their demands for recognition as well as the responses by the Serbian state and society to those demands while, following Foucault, treating both acts as techniques of government and exercises in governmentality.

It has been accepted in the historical discourse that a direct link existed between the participation of Aboriginal people in the Second World War and a new political consciousness of Aboriginal people in Canada generally, and Saskatchewan specifically, immediately after the war. This conclusion has been based on the fact that as soldiers, Aboriginal veterans had gained much experience. They had traveled to various parts of the world, had been treated as equals while fighting alongside non-Aboriginal soldiers and had been celebrated as liberators of Europe. On the return to Canada, they found that the situation of Aboriginal people had not changed. Unwilling to accept the substandard treatment for themselves and their people, it is argued, that the Aboriginal veterans became the focal point for Aboriginal rights' movement. There is in fact no evidence to support the notion that the Aboriginal veterans had a direct role in igniting Aboriginal peoples' political consciousness immediately after the war. In the first five years after the war, Aboriginal veterans were more concerned with readjusting to civilian life. They were young men who possessed few adult civilian life experiences and virtually no political experience. The emphasis on Aboriginal veterans as the political leaders after the war ignores the efforts of the existing leaders who had been involved in politics for many years. Although Aboriginal veterans did not directly influence the political climate, their existence as a group was crucial to the shifting attitude of the Canadian public toward Aboriginal people. The portrayal of Aboriginal veterans by the news media as "progressive Indians" due to their contributions to the war effort, impressed upon Canadians the need for change in the relationship between the Canadian government and Aboriginal people. By the 1950s, as the more socially, economically and to a certain extent, geographically mobile the veterans became the more socially and politically active they became. It is the contention of this research that the impact of their war experience is discernible in two ways. First, immediately after the war, the presence of Aboriginal veterans led to Canadian's re-evaluation of the relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian government. Second, in the post-war era, Aboriginal veterans became active agents of social and political change. In sum, Aboriginal veterans became, first passive catalysts and, later, engines for social and political change.

It has been accepted in the historical discourse that a direct link existed between the participation of Aboriginal people in the Second World War and a new political consciousness of Aboriginal people in Canada generally, and Saskatchewan specifically, immediately after the war. This conclusion has been based on the fact that as soldiers, Aboriginal veterans had gained much experience. They had traveled to various parts of the world, had been treated as equals while fighting alongside non-Aboriginal soldiers and had been celebrated as liberators of Europe. On the return to Canada, they found that the situation of Aboriginal people had not changed. Unwilling to accept the substandard treatment for themselves and their people, it is argued, that the Aboriginal veterans became the focal point for Aboriginal rights' movement. There is in fact no evidence to support the notion that the Aboriginal veterans had a direct role in igniting Aboriginal peoples' political consciousness immediately after the war. In the first five years after the war, Aboriginal veterans were more concerned with readjusting to civilian life. They were young men who possessed few adult civilian life experiences and virtually no political experience. The emphasis on Aboriginal veterans as the political leaders after the war ignores the efforts of the existing leaders who had been involved in politics for many years. Although Aboriginal veterans did not directly influence the political climate, their existence as a group was crucial to the shifting attitude of the Canadian public toward Aboriginal people. The portrayal of Aboriginal veterans by the news media as "progressive Indians" due to their contributions to the war effort, impressed upon Canadians the need for change in the relationship between the Canadian government and Aboriginal people. By the 1950s, as the more socially, economically and to a certain extent, geographically mobile the veterans became the more socially and politically active they became. It is the contention of this research that the impact of their war experience is discernible in two ways. First, immediately after the war, the presence of Aboriginal veterans led to Canadian's re-evaluation of the relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadian government. Second, in the post-war era, Aboriginal veterans became active agents of social and political change. In sum, Aboriginal veterans became, first passive catalysts and, later, engines for social and political change.

Thesis (doctoral)--Wageningen Universiteit, 2008. / "Propositions/Stellingen" ([1] leaf) inserted. Erratum slip inserted. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-218).

The aim of this thesis is to probe subnational varieties in compensation enacted for war victims in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. The current literature in transitional justice posits that mainly the nature of previous conflicts, democratic and economic development, international normative pressures, and the regional clustering of justice explain why only some post-war countries award material assistance to victims (Olsen et al. 2010; Kim 2012; Risse and Sikkink 2013; Powers and Proctor 2015). While these explanations provide critical insights into the processes behind compensation adoption across states, they do not explain why only some victim categories within a state secure compensation. Drawing on a large database of qualitative data ranging from interviews to newspaper articles collected during fieldwork in Bosnia, this thesis explores compensation for military and civilian war victims, victims of torture and sexual violence, and families of missing people. By zooming in on these victim categories in the Bosnian context, this thesis advances a new understanding of compensation for victims as an outcome of complex political, external, and economic influences exerted on the main domestic policymakers. This thesis uses a new analytical framework about the inter-category varieties in compensation that draws upon arguments about bounded agency of war victims who are constrained by the parameters of post-war political structures that to a large degree shape their strategies. I show that the different compensation outcomes can primarily be explained by the varying effectiveness of victims in convincing domestic political authorities that compensation is in their political interest by using framing and advocacy strategies at the domestic and international level. While such strategies are limited by the political and socioeconomic characteristics of the state, victim categories that are able to strategically frame their demands and access resources to mobilize are more likely to secure compensation adoption. Therefore, this thesis introduces three tools that victims can leverage - international salience, moral authority, and mobilization resources - that are shaped by both structural conditions and the victims' agency.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2016 / Literature has shown that war has negative psychological consequences and long-term effects on war veterans that can be passed on from generation to generation. Little is known about Zimbabwe war veterans` conceptualisation of trauma. The study was aimed at developing a culturally appropriate psychological model for Zimbabwean war veterans. The research objectives were; 1)To explore the Zimbabwean war veterans’ conceptualisation of complex trauma. 2)To establish how Zimbabwean war veterans cope with complex trauma in their lives. 3) To develop a culturally relevant psychological trauma model for war veterans in Zimbabwe. The study was qualitative and the phenomelogical research approach was adopted. The research was informed by the Afrocentric paradigm. Criterion sampling was used to select twenty-six participants. Sixteen individual interviews and two focus group discussions were conducted. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The research revealed five major themes covering the experiences of complex trauma among war veterans in Zimbabwe. These themes are social, economic, spiritual, political and personal trauma. Research findings also identified cultural notions of trauma. The participants` had their own way of conceptualising trauma in their local language. The following broad themes that described the participants` coping strategies were identified; appraisal coping, social coping, problem focused coping, emotion focused coping and spiritual coping. Their coping strategies were informed by their culture, experiences and social context. From these themes a cultural model of trauma was developed. The model is unique as it acknowledges the importance of the cultural context in the conceptualisation of trauma and the need to be knowledgeable about local constructs, meanings and languages that inform world views. The model validates propositions by the Afrocentric paradigm that trauma in African contexts is multifaceted. The study recommends the need to be culturally sensitive to understand an individual`s behaviour, explanations of distress, symptom presentation and coping strategies. The study recommends a holistic and contextual approach when intervening among war veterans in Zimbabwe.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University