Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/rsp.v16i1.774
From Deconstruction to Reconstruction of a Traumatised Community: The Example of Vukovar
Dinka Čorkalo Biruški
; Odsjek za psihologiju, Filozofski fakultet Zagreb
Dean Ajduković
; Odsjek za psihologiju, Filozofski fakultet Zagreb
Abstract
The paper presents a series of research studies of the process of social reconstruction conducted in the period from 2000 to 2004 in Vukovar. The framework consists of five basic studies: (1) survey of the opinions of citizens, Croats and Serbs, conducted in 2000 and repeated in 2002, about mutual relations before, during and after the war, and the possibilities of reconstruction of social relations and reconciliation, (2) research of attitudes towards education and interethnic relations from 2001, in which the participants were primary and secondary school students, their parents and teachers, (3) ethnographic research of the process of social reconstruction of the community in the period from 2000-2003, (4) qualitative research of socio-psychological consequences of the war and consequences for interethnic relations from 2000, and (5) the research on the breakdown of long-standing friendships between members of opposed ethnical groups. Approximately 2,300 participants directly participated in the research studies, and the ethnographic study enabled a wider and deeper analysis of the social reconstruction process that transcends the framework of the directly surveyed sample. The results indicate a slow recovery of the community multiply traumatised by the war events, which left deep, long and in many aspects probably permanent consequences on interethnic relation in once highly homogenous and functional multiethnic community. The paper proposes the model according to which the social recovery of the community simultaneously takes place on four levels: individual-psychological level, community level, social level and structural level.
Keywords
social reconstruction of the community; war; trauma; Vukovar; interethnic relations
Hrčak ID:
35161
URI
Publication date:
13.3.2009.
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