Cookies?
Library Header Image
LSE Research Online LSE Library Services

Memory activism and the victimhood paradox in Bosnia and Herzegovina: commemorating the "War Child" in the resistance against ethnic nationalism

Dragovic-Soso, Jasna (2025) Memory activism and the victimhood paradox in Bosnia and Herzegovina: commemorating the "War Child" in the resistance against ethnic nationalism. East European Politics. ISSN 2159-9165

Full text not available from this repository.

Identification Number: 10.1080/21599165.2025.2562412

Abstract

Noting the conceptual malleability and the historically opposed political uses of victimhood, this article analyses the strategies deployed to navigate the “victimhood paradox” in two cases of memory activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It examines an annual grassroots commemoration in Prijedor for local children killed in the 1992–1995 war and the curatorial practice and educational work of the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo as a socially active cultural institution. It argues that the activists' focus on the symbol of the child as an “ideal” victim, combined with their adoption of different but complementary forms of public action across ethnic and generational boundaries, has shaped an inclusive counter-memory of the war and underpinned resistance against dominant ethnonationalist narratives in the country.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2025 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Divisions: LSEE - Research on South Eastern Europe
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DR Balkan Peninsula
H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited: 30 Sep 2025 08:45
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2025 08:45
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129638

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item