Victim Narratives Research Articles

Social Deception Through Narrative Rationality Celebrity Drug Users

When arrested by the authorities, celebrities always insist that they use drugs to work, just as users, just trying, because of the work environment, deliberately targeted by the police or BNN, police engineering, they are framed. Jefri Nichol was one of the celebrities who made such a statement. The purpose of the study was to assess the rationality of Jefri Nichol's drug-related narrative. The study used Walter R. Fisher's Narrative Paradigm and Barbara O'Keefe's Theory of Message-Making Logic. Methodologically, research is an interpretive paradigm with case study methods. The subject of his research was Jefri Nichol and his statements in the media as his object. The results of the study showed that Jefri Nichol's was inconsistent. Before the case, Jefri Nichol knew the negative impact of drugs on his life and career. After being caught in the narrative, drug use is just trial and error because of work. During the examination of the police, the court, and undergoing rehabilitation, Jefri Nichol produced a narrative of victimhood in which the final motive was the reduction of punishment, image, existence, and economy. Keywords: Narrative Paradigm, Celebrity, drug users

“Dating Was That Illusion”: Analysis of Narratives of Poor Women Victims of Violent Relationships

Resumo Partindo do quadro teórico oferecido pela Análise da Narrativa, este trabalho analisa narrativas de histórias de vida de mulheres pobres que vivenciaram relacionamentos conjugais violentos, descrevendo como essas mulheres operam discursivamente com determinados aspectos normativos estabelecidos socialmente, atrelados aos atravessamentos de “gênero”, “raça” e “classe social”. Observa-se também como os atravessamentos se articulam com elementos e sistemas sociais contemporâneos - o amor romântico, a religiosidade, o valor do trabalho, a meritocracia. Nesse caminho, sobretudo nas “avaliações” das narrativas analisadas, observamos determinadas normas instituídas de gênero concorrendo com novos elementos - tais como a agência das narradoras - caracterizados por estabelecer fissuras sobre aspectos normativos, ratificando a posição assumida por Butler (2014), segundo a qual, embora a categoria “gênero” faça referência ao mecanismo pelo qual as noções de masculino e feminino são produzidas e naturalizadas, também coloca esses aspectos em questão, produzindo transformações nas convenções sociais generificadas.

'Pooped in my yard and ate my grass last night': Wild burros and tales of belonging in Riverside County, California

Riverside County, California is home to several hundred free-roaming burros (donkeys) who frequent the open spaces surrounding and between the cities of Riverside, Moreno Valley, Loma Linda, and Redlands, as well as the public parks, private properties, residential developments and roadsides in these towns. Tales of more-than-human belonging (and not-belonging) in Riverside County render visible how multispecies places are mediated by infrastructures of consumption and infrastructures of reciprocity. Where infrastructures of consumption generate callousness, infrastructures of reciprocity sustain responsibility. We investigate these dynamics by tracing how two geographically close but infrastructurally distinctive spaces frequented by the area’s wild burros are storied. The semi-rural Reche Canyon Road connects California Highway 60 and the City of Moreno Valley to Riverside and San Bernardino County communities to the north. Burros who inhabit the canyon as their home range must contend with automobiles traveling at highway speeds and are frequently injured or killed there. The road’s design makes neither space nor time for the burros. In this setting, interspecies relationalities are embedded in, and curtailed by, the mundane violence of “roadkill” and its associated narratives of victimhood and tragedy. Infrastructural violence subsides notably in residential neighborhoods of the City of Moreno Valley frequented by the burros. How people and donkeys co-inhabit these neigborhoods is consistent with non-dualist practices of mutual accommodation theorized in multispecies urbanism literature. Here, more reciprocal infrastructures decelerate human and nonhuman animal mobilities, making both space and time for the emergence of more convivial patterns of multispecies cohabitation.

The Power of History: How A Victimization Narrative Shapes National Identity and Public Opinion in China

The Power of History: How A Victimization Narrative Shapes National Identity and Public Opinion in China

A Mordovian settlement as a site and community of historical memory: collective narratives and representations

Introduction. The article summarizes the results of a study of social practices and narratives of the commemoration of the victims of mass political repression in the village of Kruglyi (the Republic of Mordovia) that was established as a permanent settlement in the period of collectivization. Materials and Methods. The theoretical framework of the study consists of social theories of “memory sites” and collective trauma. The method of collecting empirical data corresponded to case study, including observation, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis of media publications. The data were analyzed using the methods of thick ethnographic description and narrative discourse analysis. Results and Discussion. The article reviews the social context of local commemoration; identifies the main stages and practices of creating a “place of memory” in the village of Kruglyi by constructing a self-made monument of stained oak with a memorial plaque, and its subsequent mediatization. The authors analyze local discourses and narratives of social memory and material aspects of commemoration; regional, identify national and international mnemonic actors, acting as agents of the process of cultural trauma. They reveal and interpret the content of competing narratives of victimization and devictimization of the local community. Conclusion. Based on the data obtained in the course of fieldwork, the authors deconstruct media of the history of the village and identify two different models of its description. They conclude that these models are conditioned by various models of commemorating social trauma: one is “therapeutic”, focused more on deprivation and the loss of group identity; another one is “macrohistoric”, or in other words based on interpreting trauma as an aspect of social transformation seen as a process containing prerequisites for working the trauma out.

Subverting war narrative in the purview of gender justice: Analysing Bishkanta (2015): A Liberation War documentary from Bangladesh

This article analyses how a Bangladeshi documentary film Bishkanta (The Poison Thorn) () directed by a feminist and cultural activist Farzana Boby negotiates the gendered war narrative of Bangladesh and how the film is being used as an enabling platform for the Birangonas (‘war-raped women’) to express their long-time endured suffering and outrage. The Liberation War of Bangladesh (1971) is amongst the most represented themes in Bangladeshi media culture. However, feminist scholars have been critical about the gender blindness of the depictions, with women’s experiences encoded only as victims. Hence, a documentary demanding recognition of women’s contributions and enabling space for women to speak about their losses, pains and grievance is an exception. By analysing the narrative techniques (i.e. plot, perspective, language and frames) this article shows how Bishkanta represents the stories of female rape survivors and make a claim for gender justice. Our findings suggest, despite Boby’s good intentions, Bishkanta has been reproducing the mainstream victimhood narrative ascribed to these women and occasionally reinscribing the gendered ideology of Liberation War in the mainstream nationalist discourse.

Representations of disaster victimhood: Framing suffering and loss after the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake

AbstractThis article seeks to address a thematic thread that remains relatively unexplored in historical disaster research—victimhood—through an analysis of publications by disaster relief funds and their supporters in the aftermath of the 1934 earthquake in Bihar in northern India. By examining the representations of victimhood, I aim to explore the historical significance of perceptions and constructions of victimhood in the late colonial period. Based on photographs, illustrations, and descriptions of suffering in images and texts, the article suggests that constructions of victimhood effectively relied on imagery that contained, on the one hand, an absence of bodies and, on the other, a feminized anthropomorphization of suffering. The narratives underlying such depictions of earthquake victims are based on a constitution of victimhood that relied on contemporary historical and culturally founded imageries. The analysis of images and texts focuses on how representations of disaster victims were effective in communicating suffering to audiences. I tentatively argue that historically and culturally founded tropes of what constituted a victim formed along two narratives of victimhood that appealed to a colonial and a nationalist readership respectively. These conceptualizations of victimhood formed the basis for collecting aid for relief and reconstruction, rather than the loss of life, dispossession, social marginalization, and displacement suffered by victims of the earthquake.

Embodying Burundi after War: Roland Rugero’s Baho!

Roland Rugero’s 2012 novel, Baho!, introduces its mute protagonist from the perspective of a one-eyed old woman, raising questions of embodied trauma in relation to narrative issues of voice and point of view. Critical discussion of Baho! has focused on its mute protagonist, exploring issues of voicelessness, post-colonial subalternity and scapegoating in relation to political violence, an emphasis that tends to reduce Rugero’s complex novel to a victim narrative. This article examines how Rugero embodies trauma in his narrative, both to acknowledge a wounded and wounding body politic and to explore literary strategies for imagining a future beyond the impasse of recurrent national violence. Drawing on Burundian humanism, which understands humanity as both weak and strong, arousing simultaneous and inseparable responses of pity and admiration, it discusses how the embodied trauma of Baho!’s point-of-view characters informs perspective and shapes its narrative. It also considers how these characters represent national spaces and stories as they redirect a post-conflict narrative of violence toward a vision of life that integrates trauma without being disabled by it. This vision represents a political choice to reject a victim identity, affirming instead survival and resilience, as in the lines Rugero quotes from the Burundian anthem as his epigraph, which boasts that the nation, however crushed by histories of violence, yet survives. Ending with a generative femininity that transfigures the abjectly feminised setting of the novel’s opening, Baho! embraces life, arousing compassionate admiration for Burundi and Burundians as they journey beyond war.

Beyond the Victimhood Narrative: A Case Study of Unexpectedly Successful Collectivization in Communist Poland

Abstract This article is a micro-historical study of the collectivization of agriculture carried out by the communist authorities in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945. Using the example of the village of Gierczyce in the Kielce region (Central Poland), it shows under what conditions collectivization, resisted in most of the Polish countryside, was able to succeed, and it traces the long-term effects of this process on Gierczyce’s social structure and social relations. It also analyzes this rural community’s contemporary memory of the emergence and functioning of the production cooperative. Thus, it critically engages with, and questions, the “resistance paradigm” dominant in studies of collectivization. Enriched with a broader regional and national comparative context, the article is based on the analysis of archival material from central and regional archives, personal documents, and extensive field research.

Towards a Narrative Understanding of Victimhood: The Perception of Intergroup Conflicts in Light of Past Ingroup Victimization

The present study explores the role of linguistic compositional characteristics in transmitting collective victimhood beliefs. Experimentally manipulated excerpts of history textbooks were used to examine the perception of the victim position of national outgroups and its intermediary social psychological processes with Hungarian (N = 415) and Finnish (N = 116) participants. The results reveal that the narrative composition of the victimhood narrative had a significant effect on the perception of the target groups' victimhood position. The evaluation of the groups changed according to which variant of the story was introduced. The results demonstrate that the perception of a perpetrator group can be changed purely by means of narrative construction and that their actions can acquire a "victim tone". This effect is present in both the Hungarian and Finnish samples, suggesting that narrating an event of victimhood has certain universal characteristics, although their effect is partially dependent on the national-historical-cultural context.

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

The biblical entreaty zakhor – Hebrew for ‘remember’ – has been central to the efforts of diaspora Jewish scholars, religious leaders, politicians and others to suture the suffering past to the present. The imperative to not only remember but also commemorate histories of suffering is ubiquitous among conflict-generated diasporas as well. For diaspora Croats, victim-centred themes regularly surface in identity narratives, focusing on memories of trauma and suffering after the establishment of the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia in 1945. While the manipulation of victimhood narratives and the rehabilitation of controversial histories by Croatian political elites have been examined extensively, the persistence of memories focused on suffering among diaspora Croats has received less scholarly attention. In this article, I ask why, 30 years after the end of the Homeland War and the establishment of the Croatian state, do victimhood narratives continue to resonate for diaspora Croats particularly from the Herzegovinian region of the former Yugoslavia who arrived in Canada between 1945 and 1990. What role do memory activists in Canada originating mainly from Herzegovina play in lubricating and mobilizing memories that reinforce victimhood? Finally, how does the desire for validation and legitimacy beyond diaspora communities factor into commemorations and initiatives focused on collective suffering? The focus here is on research conducted between 2019 and 2020 in Toronto when diaspora commemorations and the memory narratives that have sustained them came under increased critical scrutiny, challenging the veracity of Croatian victimhood claims.

Active Transportation Policies: Do Media Narratives Matter?

The intersection of media, public opinion, politics, and their relationship with public policy is well documented. Taking the issue of active transportation, we examine if media narratives on bicycle and pedestrian crashes appear important in shaping policy. We define positive and negative narratives portraying bicyclists and pedestrians as victims and villains respectively. Our research objective is to understand if media narratives have an effect on the policy tools used by decision-makers to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety. We examine if there is a relationship between the victim versus villain narrative and policy change at the state level. Using a mixed-methods research design, we analyze publication reports on crashes collected from 12 states for the period 2003–2015. We find that the victim narrative remains more prevalent in crash reporting, and the probability of policy change has a positive relationship with crash reporting rate. Greater salience of the issue in media reporting may influence increased policy change.

The uses of victimhood as a hegemonic meta-narrative in eastern Europe

ABSTRACT Narratives of wartime suffering, communist evils, and maltreatment by the ‘West’ have started featuring prominently in the political discourse across eastern Europe in the past decade and half. Permeating the public sphere, such narratives imply complex victimhood and often gain a hegemonic status. Why have such victimhood narratives become so pervasive? And what has been their purpose across eastern Europe? This interdisciplinary article provides a conceptual and empirical explanation of how hegemonic narratives of victimhood have been used to enhance ontological security and as an instrument of power-seeking political leaders, especially (but not exclusively) right-wing populists. It shows that although the local attachment to memory and history is often portrayed as irrational, victimhood as a narrative has clear benefits regarding national ontological security as the self-understanding of a state and a tool to justify policies. Using concrete examples, the articles identify three main sub-narratives of direct, historical and structural victimhood linked to World War II, communism and the precarious relationship with the ‘West’, arguing that the combination of historical traumas and the post-1989 transformations explain the pan-regional proliferation of victimhood.

Tales of woe: farmers–herders conflict and victimisation experiences in Nigeria

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the victimisation experiences of farmers, herders and community members within the context of the persistent conflict between farmers and herders across Nigeria, with specific focus on Anambra, Benue and Oyo states in south-east, north-central and south-west geopolitical zones of the country, respectively.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the cross-sectional survey to elicit quantitative data from 725 respondents made up of 256 farmers, 225 herders and 244 community members aged 18 years and above, in six purposively sampled local government areas in the three states, while 16 in-depth interviews, 19 key informant interviews and 18 focus group discussions were conducted to extract qualitative data from purposively sampled farmers, herders, community leaders and members of the study communities.FindingsThe results show that farmers, herders and other community members in the study suffered losses in the form of destruction of farmlands and livelihood, internal displacement and human fatalities, for the farmers and community members; and destruction of livelihood, loss of money and human fatalities, for the herders. The paper predicts a worsening of the feud between these groups and the attendant reprisal attacks and victimisation if the current binary narrative of victimhood that privileges the needs and experiences of one group over the other persists, and urges stakeholders to put in place enduring structures that will minimise nomadic herding and ensure proactive security.Originality/valueThe focus on the issue of the “victimisation experiences” of herders and farmers and the invitation to researchers and policymakers to examine the role of the prevailing binary construction of victimhood in the conflict is a refreshing addition to other works on this subject.

Fundamental Principles of International Law in Remedy and Reparation for Genocide Victims: Remembering and Forgetting

All victims of human rights violations have the right to an effective remedy and to redress. Although this concept is a result of the responsibility of the state in cases of human rights violations, it is mostly important. International legal provisions on this issue are varied and often vague and do not use uniform terminology. Also, the detailed aspects of the duties of states in the prevention of grave violations of human rights have been established and refined in the international jurisprudence. The General Assembly, Recalling the provisions providing for the right to a remedy for victims of violations of international human rights law contained in numerous international instruments, in particular Article 8 and Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil Rights (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), (and Article 6 Of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). Without a doubt, for transitional justice, which seeks to address and transcend the legacy of impunity after mass abuse, the issues of truth-seeking, acknowledgment, and remembering victims are an essential part of our work towards building rights-deprived societies. Our time is bad. But not everyone agrees with this. There are many who say that it is better to turn the page, with the end of armed violence or systemic repression, that talking about the past, and insisting on noticing the commission of crimes and harms, may raise the risk of a return to violence. This perspective is It is often an honest response to years of turmoil, exhaustion, and fear, but unfortunately, too often these insights are used. It is overtly committed by those with influence and can be understood as a veiled threat in many circumstances. (Certainly this was the case in Chile and Guatemala, and perhaps today in Myanmar or Uganda.) Others argue that narratives of victimhood can be developed or manipulated into calls for revenge or that collective memory of grievances cannot be used to justify new wars, even centuries later. It is undoubtedly part of the context that we see in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the African shawl.

The Narratives of Victims of Domestic Violence during The Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19 pandemic that hit the world globally since the end of 2019 has indeed give a huge impact on human life which for some was domestic violence. In Malaysia, cases increased even higher after the implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO). Women, especially from the Malay ethnic group in Malaysia have shown the highest statistics involved in domestic violence problems. The objectives of this research are to identify the factors influencing domestic violence during the MCO and explore the steps taken by the victims to escape from domestic violence during the MCO. This study was conducted using a qualitative design by using a phenomenological approach to understand the various experiences of being a victim of domestic violence during the MCO. Informants were recruited via purposive sampling. Thematic analysis was used to explore themes that emerged from the study. Results found that financial problems, the influence of alcohol and drugs as well as the negative attitude of the husband influenced domestic violence where victims suffer either in a form of physical abuse, psychological and emotional abuse. Stress management and seeking social support were mostly reported by the informants as means of coping with domestic violence. Further discussions can be found in the article.

Victim-Centred Peacemaking: The Colombian Experience

ABSTRACT This article interrogates how survivors/victims participate in peacemaking and victim-centred Transitional Justice initiatives, focusing on the role of the victims' delegations during the Santos-FARC/EP peace talks in Colombia (2012-2016). The article presents unique empirical data, drawing on sixty-eight interviews with participants from the talks. The research assesses Colombia's victim-centred approach, arguing that the delegations shaped the content of the peace agreement, influenced historic narratives of victimhood and shaped victim-perpetrator relationships, facilitating victim agency and empowerment. However, wider political and economic prerogatives and dominant TJ tendencies constrained the broader exercise of agency, whilst participants experienced episodes of disempowerment and instrumentalisation.

The Victim Narrative of the 1965-1966 Massacre in Indonesia as A Biopicture

This paper examines the victim narrative of the 1965-1966 massacre in Indonesia from the perspective of W.J.T. Mitchell’s Biopicture. Biopicture considers an image as if it is a living thing that has the capacity to multiply, transform, and even resurrect. During the New Order era, the victim narrative of the 1965-1966 massacre was silenced by the state. Under the Soeharto presidency, there was no possibility to deliver and discuss the victim narrative of the massacre. Even in the post-reformation era, the victim narrative of the 1965-1966 massacre is often banned by the state. The hypothesis of this research is the victim narrative of the 1965-1966 massacre is a biopicture that can emerge, be born, or resurrect in various media despite being under pressure from government censors.

“People love talking about racism”: downplaying discrimination, and challenges to anti-racism among Eritrean migrants in Australia

ABSTRACT Why may the supposed victims of racism and discrimination downplay these phenomena? This paper examines experiences of and responses to racism and discrimination among highly educated Eritrean migrants in Australia. Contrary to research findings on experiences of discrimination among migrant groups as widely reported and impactful, most of my interlocutors seldom reported such experiences, despite acknowledging that discrimination existed generally and vicariously. I discuss participants’ direct and indirect experiences with racism and discrimination, and identify five key reasons for downplaying and not reporting them, including limitations to perceiving and recognizing these phenomena; undermining racism in Australia in comparison to other racisms; gratitude to Australians and to Australia as “the lucky country”; harbouring strong meritocratic values that contrasted with viewing discrimination as impactful; and dissociation from narratives of victimhood and powerlessness. Finally, I discuss how participants’ perspectives pose challenges for anti-racism scholarship and practice more broadly.

The unspoken red-line in Colombia: Gender reordering of women ex-combatants and the transformative peace agenda

Academic perspectives on women in conflict have been consistently moving away from the reductionist narrative of victimhood or deviation from gender norms. Yet, this narrative is still predominant in humanitarian discourses, while it is assumed that women’s participation in peacebuilding derives from their natural proclivities. These narratives, we argue, reinforce the gendered patriarchal post-conflict order as ex-combatant women are pushed into traditional roles through reintegration processes without addressing gendered structural and systemic violence. This article is based on the Colombian case, where a peace agreement in 2016 marked the official end to decades of conflict between FARC-EP rebels and the government. While deep changes were promised, the reality for women ex-combatants has been – despite unprecedented levels of women’s participation – a reordering into traditional roles and a reinforcement of conjugal order rather than a transformative progression towards peacetime emancipation. We argue that, while the government claimed that the economic and political systems were non-negotiable red-lines, there was also another unspoken red-line: that of gender roles. This article argues that addressing the gendered structural roots of conflicts in order to build sustainable peace requires a decisive participation of women, including former rebel combatants whose potential contribution to transformative peacebuilding are often ignored.