- Description
Description
In Amoral Communities, Mila Dragojevic examines how conditions conducive to atrocities against civilians are created during wartime in some communities. She identifies the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders as the main processes. In these places, political and ethnic identities become linked and targeted violence against civilians becomes both tolerated and justified by the respective authorities as a necessary sacrifice for a greater political goal.
Dragojevic augments the literature on genocide and civil wars by demonstrating how violence can be used as a political strategy, and how communities, as well as individuals, remember episodes of violence against civilians. The communities on which she focuses are Croatia in the 1990s and Uganda and Guatemala in the 1980s. In each case Dragojevic considers how people who have lived peacefully as neighbors for many years are suddenly transformed into enemies, yet intracommunal violence is not ubiquitous throughout the conflict zone; rather, it is specific to particular regions or villages within those zones. Reporting on the varying wartime experiences of individuals, she adds depth, emotion, and objectivity to the historical and socioeconomic conditions that shaped each conflict.
Furthermore, as Amoral Communities describes, the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders limit individuals' freedom to express their views, work to prevent the possible defection of members of an in-group, and facilitate identification of individuals who are purportedly a threat. Even before mass killings begin, Dragojevic finds, these and similar changes will have transformed particular villages or regions into amoral communities, places where the definition of crime changes and violence is justified as a form of self-defense by perpetrators.
Author: Mila Dragojevic
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 10/15/2019
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781501739828
ISBN10: 1501739824
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Genocide & War Crimes
- History | Eastern Europe | General
- Social Science | Violence in Society
About the Author
Mila Dragojevic is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of the South. She is author of The Politics of Social Ties.
