Abstract

Previous research on victimhood during and after the Bosnian war has emphasized the importance of narratives but has not focused on narratives about victimhood or analyzed post-war interviews as a competition for victimhood. This article tries to fill this gap using stories told by survivors of the Bosnian war during the 1990s. In this analysis of the retold experiences of 27 survivors of the war in northwestern Bosnia, the aim is to describe the informants’ portrayal of “victimhood” as a social phenomenon as well as analyzing the discursive patterns that contribute to constructing the category “victim”. When, after the war, different categories claim a “victim” status, it sparks a competition for victimhood. All informants are eager to present themselves as victims while at the same time the other categories’ victim status are downplayed. In this reproduction of competition for the victim role, all demarcations that were played out so successfully during the war live on.

Highlights

  • Previous research on victimhood during the Bosnian war often has presented a one-sided picture of the “victim” and “perpetrator”

  • Individuals who were expelled from northwestern Bosnia during the war in the 1990s are, in legal terms, a recognized victim

  • The primary goal was to describe how actors present the social phenomenon of “victimhood”, and the secondary aim was to analyze discursive patterns that contribute to constructing the terms “victim” and “perpetrator”

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Summary

Introduction

Previous research on victimhood during the Bosnian war often has presented a one-sided picture of the “victim” and “perpetrator”. The picture of victims is often exemplified by killed or raped and displaced adults and children. The picture of perpetrators is exemplified by soldiers or policemen who have displaced, raped, and killed civilians. Victims are partly exemplified by individuals killed in the war and partly by individuals who survived the war but lost relatives or were displaced or raped during the war. The picture of the perpetrator is exemplified partly by former soldiers and policemen who had killed and raped as well as participated in the displacement, and partly by economic perpetrators who became rich during the war

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