Legacies of war: Syrian narratives of conflict and visions of peace

Abstract

This article is interested in the formation of war legacies and how they interact with social identities. It suggests a bottom-up approach towards examining the societal processes in which individuals create a legacy of war. It posits that through their narratives of conflict, by remembering what happened to them as a group, they mould the meaning and boundaries of how the group will be membered post-conflict. The validity of the theorised link between war memory and group membership is then tested in the case of Syria. In 200 interviews, Syrians provided their narratives of the conflict and their vision of a future Syrian state and society. The findings show that most respondents’ narratives follow a civic rationale, forming a society around civil rights and political ideas rather than around ethnic/sectarian divides. With this, the article contributes a new route for international relations scholars to understand the formation of war legacies through individuals’ narratives of conflict and explains their effects on ties of group belonging while also offering a glimpse into the Syrian ‘we’ amid the ongoing war in Syria.

International Mediation, Identity Construction, and Normative Change

“…Nevertheless, there is also the possibility that their refrains represent attempts to mask a concern at the splintering of Syria and Yemen post-2011, and are an attempt, therefore, to rhetorically hold the states together. Furthermore, the construction of democracy and reform as central aspirations of the Syrian and Yemeni national identities align with the nascent arguments within area studies scholarship which contend that 2011 and its aftermath provoked a reimagining of identities in Syria and Yemen which foregrounded civic values (Ismail 2011;Phillips 2015;Bartolomei 2018;Leenders 2013;Chevée 2021;Bachleitner 2021a;Bachleitner 2021b;Bonnefoy & Poirier 2013;Philbrick Yadav 2017). Crucially, this construction, this foregrounding of democracy as binding together all Syrians and all Yemenis, represents a departure from the identifications observed by academics in Syria and Yemen prior to 2011.…”

Inter-state war, institutions and multinationals: insights from the Russian-Ukraine war

“…War impacts focal social actors in the MNE’s home institutional environment because it impinges on every facet of life: economic, social and cultural (Summerfield, 1997). An intense military confrontation, such as a military invasion of a country, often generates major human displacements, human right violations and a humanitarian crisis (Bachleitner, 2021; Hotho and Girschik, 2019). By the second week of the Russian–Ukrainian war, there were 750 civilian causalities and 1.5 m Ukrainian refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries and millions displaced internally (Guardian, 2022, 8th March).…”

Constitutional inclusion in divided societies: Conceptual choices, practical dilemmas and the contribution of the grassroots in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

“…those representing a range of BME groups) or as intersectionally defined individuals? The increasing interest in everyday constructions of identity and politics in peace-making suggests that group-centred identification may be less central to these marginalised constituencies than is often supposed (Bachleitner, 2021; see also Mac Ginty, 2021). There is considerable discussion whether and when what Michèle Lamont (2019) calls ‘everyday universalism’ serves as an alternative to groupist perspectives.…”