Post-conflict heritage: symbolic healing and cultural renewal

Bullet impacts and built heritage damage 1640–1939

“…Conflict damage can therefore be associated with a changed status as a heritage site, turning a previously little-noticed site into a monument or providing an additional layer of 'commemorative value' to an existing heritage site. The commemorative role of heritage in post-conflict social reconstruction can be supportive, allowing the surviving population to rebuild their cultural identity, provided there is suitable management in place to facilitate reconciliation rather than encourage continued aggravation towards the 'other side' [4]. However, the complexities of adding a new commemorative layer-i.e., the damage sustained during the conflict-to existing heritage such as monuments and places of worship require a more specific approach to the wider conversation about heritage and conflict: war-damaged heritage sites must instead be specifically targeted by conservation and restoration efforts to preserve both the heritage and, if possible, the new heritage in the form of conflict damage.…”

De la represión al patrimonio: vestigios de la violencia de estado en Madrid y Santiago de Chile

“…Las potencialidades y peligros de los usos del patrimonio en sociedades post-conflicto o posttrauma han sido y están siendo abordados por varios estudios (p.e. Ashworth y Tunbridge 1996;Giblin 2013;Viejo Rose 2014), que analizan la producción social del patrimonio como herramienta para la construcción o re-construcción de identidades colectivas después de eventos o procesos de violencia.…”

The Performance of International Diplomacy at Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda

“…These include papers on: the contribution of Rwandese survivor groups to memorial management (Ibreck 2010;Jessee 2017b); the influence of non-Rwandan developmental organisations (Ibreck 2013); the politics, affects, and effects of the ongoing exhumation, identification, internment, rearrangement, and cleaning of the human remains at the memorials (Jessee 2012;Major 2015); the role of the memorials in communicating a single authorised narrative (Jessee 2017a); the role of the memorials in peacebuilding, including the contrast between memorial narratives and civilian memories (King 2010); the location of the memorials within an international post-conflict heritage-healing complex (Giblin 2013a); and the investigation of the memorials as a form of dark, difficult, or uncomfortable tourism (Robb 2009;Mckinney 2012;Friedrich and Johnston 2013), including the effect of the memorials on tourists as analysed through online tourist photographs of human remains at the sites (Bolin 2012). In terms of memorial performativity, Bolin's (2012) study is of interest.…”

“…The memorial research was undertaken as part of a larger project that considered the role of heritage in postconflict development in western Great Lakes Africa, specifically Rwanda and Uganda. In Rwanda, the research was carried out with the permission of the Institute of National Museums of Rwanda (INMR) and the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), government organisations that have historically managed the memorials in collaboration with survivor groups (Giblin 2013a;Ibreck 2010Ibreck , 2013. To understand the post-conflict heritage effects of the memorials, the research employed participant observation, interviews with visitors and staff, and photographic recording and analysis of all available visitor books, amassing records of thousands of entries made over the past decade (Giblin 2013a).…”

“…In Rwanda, the research was carried out with the permission of the Institute of National Museums of Rwanda (INMR) and the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), government organisations that have historically managed the memorials in collaboration with survivor groups (Giblin 2013a;Ibreck 2010Ibreck , 2013. To understand the post-conflict heritage effects of the memorials, the research employed participant observation, interviews with visitors and staff, and photographic recording and analysis of all available visitor books, amassing records of thousands of entries made over the past decade (Giblin 2013a). This methodology was employed at all of the national genocide memorial centres, including the KMC, Murambi, Nyarubuye, Ntarama, Bisesero, Nyanza, and Nyamata, with a focus on KMC and Murambi because these are the most developed and visited.…”