Veterans’ Politics from Below

Schäfer, Jessica

doi:10.1057/9780230605718_7

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Without denying the importance of a person's entire biography (cf. Schafer, 2007), involvement in war is a defining moment for an ex-combatant. In fact, it is often at this point that the interviewees themselves start to make sense of their current situation as demobilized individuals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Allport (2009) recounts that World War II returnees to Britain experienced joy at arrival along with feelings of fear and regret. Schafer (2007) looks at roles and life trajectories of former combatants in Mozambique and notes that many veterans characterize their war experience as the defining moment of their lives. However, their involvement in war is not a uniform experience for every ex-combatant but is instead experienced in many different ways.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Emotional legacies of war among former Colombian paramilitaries.

Nussio¹

2012

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drawing on 62 interviews with former members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), a right-wing paramilitary umbrella organization that fought against guerrilla groups and was involved in drug trafficking, I develop a model of the emotional legacies of war. The proposed model is critical to the understanding of ex-combatants' behavior in the context of postwar disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. This study connects three related elements: excombatants' recollection of their initial reason for joining the war and their war experiences, their present perception of those reasons and experiences, and an emotional legacy tied to their perceptions. I have designated the emotional residue that emerges from the remembered past, including regret, pride, resentment, nostalgia, and tiredness of being at war, an emotional legacy. These emotional legacies connect ex-combatants' perception of their past with the present.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional legacies of war among former Colombian paramilitaries.

Nussio¹

2012

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Geffray (1990) observed that civilians who initially welcomed Renamo shunned it once they realized it had no distinct political vision, yet for Lubkemann (2008: 155) it was ‘RENAMO's lack of political vision of the state or a program for its local articulation that gave it local legitimacy’. In the post-war period, Schafer notes that ‘many of those who expressed frustration at their exclusion from the benefits of Mozambican citizenship considered themselves citizens’, and that this ‘negative sense of citizenship’ raised ‘questions about the state's stability and foundational legitimacy’ (2007: 170). Wiegink (2015) concludes that ex-soldiers identify with Renamo because they experience the multiparty system as a game in which Frelimo rewards only its supporters.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the violence prompted a resurgence in votes for Renamo in the 2014 general election (see Table 1) and has prompted Frelimo to consider seriously constitutional reforms that elements within the party had long resisted. The political attitudes of Renamo soldiers have attracted much scholarly attention since 1992 (Manning 1998; Schafer 2001; 2007; Vines 2013; Wiegink 2015; 2019). More recent work has situated the post-2013 violence in the context of the shortcomings of the 1992 settlement, which became manifest as political and economic change intensified elite competition over resource rents (Vines et al .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

History, legitimacy, and Renamo's return to arms in central Mozambique

Pearce¹

2020

Africa

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Twenty years after the Mozambican war ended, a return to arms from 2013 by the opposition movement Renamo served to revitalize support for the party in the 2014 election, and put pressure on the Frelimo government to consider demands for constitutional change. Building on existing research on post-war politics and on recent economic change, this article addresses the question of how Renamo obtained civilians’ approval for renewed armed action in the south of Sofala province, the region where conflict broke out in 2013. I argue that popular legitimacy for Renamo's challenge to the state is constituted in a narrative about Renamo that is congruent both with present-day grievances against the state and with understandings of local history dating to the anticolonial struggle that challenge the nationalist history on which Frelimo hegemony rests. Renamo has adapted this narrative in such a way as to claim a historic role for itself in defending the interests of central and northern Mozambique and in struggling for an inclusive and democratic state. In this way, Renamo has gained support for its renewed armed actions, not only among those politicized by Renamo in the earlier war but more broadly among civilians in the region.

show abstract

“…Despite the lack of consensus about its causes and whether it was a civil war or not (1976–1992), 7 the fact is that Mozambican society added 16 more years to its devastating war résumé. While the number of war-related deaths was close to one million (Hanlon, 1991), 1.5 million were forcibly displaced and made refugees in the neighboring countries due to the horrors provoked by both sides, Frelimo and the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo) (Igreja, 2008; Schafer, 2007; Wiegink, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different mechanisms, same result: Remembering the liberation war in Mozambique

Bueno

2021

Memory Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Even though scholars have made substantial contributions in connecting the fields of transitional justice and memory studies, important questions remain unanswered. The question of sequencing is one of them. How does a certain TJ mechanism condition the implementation of subsequent mechanisms and how together they shape memory narratives in a given society? This article builds on the case of Mozambique. Soon after the signing of the General Peace Agreement in 1992, the Frelimo-led government approved Amnesty Law 15/92 and with it, the past was to be left in the past. Such a choice was different from the one taken by Samora Machel—Mozambique’s first president—between 1975 and 1982. By promoting a quasi-truth commission, Machel revisited Mozambique’s colonial past and brought comprometidos’ actions into the open. This article finds that whether the government opened up about the past or sought to leave it behind, the result has been the same: the celebratory reproduction of the liberation war narrative. Resorting to path dependence and critical junctures, this study explains the ways in which such a narrative has become hegemonic throughout the last four decades.

show abstract

Veterans’ Politics from Below

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

Emotional legacies of war among former Colombian paramilitaries.

Emotional legacies of war among former Colombian paramilitaries.

History, legitimacy, and Renamo's return to arms in central Mozambique

Different mechanisms, same result: Remembering the liberation war in Mozambique

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About