Working with survivors of war rape and sexual violence: fieldwork reflections from Bosnia-Hercegovina

Clark, Janine Natalya

doi:10.1177/1468794116671987

Cited by 18 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…What these examples show is that however well intentioned, efforts to protect 'traumatized women' from further harm are not always beneficial (Wood 2005: 4). 9 Some NGOs have arguably taken their legitimate gate-keeping role too far (Clark 2017a), and this 'usurpatory ventriloquism' -to coin Bourdieu's term (1990: 211) -offers a poignant illustration of how the use of trauma discourse can contribute to disempowering victims/survivors. To further develop this argument, Dawson (2017: 86) comments on the 'inherent pathologising of the subject as traumatised under the impact of a determining external event, which has been selected and interpreted as such by cultural analysts trained in deciphering its unspeakable effects'.…”

Section: Trauma As a Disempowering Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

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Helping or harming? NGOs and victims/-survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Clark

2019

Journal of Human Rights

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Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

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Section: Trauma As a Disempowering Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conversations with these NGOs were often difficult, and one of the most challenging parts of the fieldwork was the frequent feeling of being (pre)judged (Clark 2017a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Helping or harming? NGOs and victims/-survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Clark

2019

Journal of Human Rights

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“…The idea for this article developed out of my own research with victims–/survivors 1 of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) (e.g. see Clark, 2017a , 2017b). Time and time again, I have been told – primarily by members of civil society in BiH – that women 2 who suffered sexual violence during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war do not want to talk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding a Voice: Silence and its Significance for Transitional Justice

Clark

2019

Social & Legal Studies

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On the surface at least, silence appears to have no obvious or legitimate place within transitional justice. The latter is about voice and about truth-telling, about creating a factual record of what happened. The core aim of the article, however, is to demonstrate that silence is highly relevant to transitional justice. To develop this argument, it explores two possible and interrelated functions of silence – as a form of resistance and as a survival strategy. Conceptualizing silence as a form of absence, and emphasizing a dialectical relationship between silence as being and becoming, the article underlines the transformative possibilities of silence and their significance for transitional justice. In particular, silence can aid in the development of more agentic and contextually sensitive ways of dealing with the past. A major challenge for transitional justice, thus, is to find ways of allowing silence to ‘speak’.

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“…Indeed, stories of suffering and distress played an important role in my early analysis as I processed vicarious trauma from the field. Fieldwork trauma is a documented experience among researchers including research students (Pollard 2009;Clark 2017;Kanyeredzi 2018). Both Janine Natalya Clark (2017) and Ava Kanyeredzi (2018) discuss struggling with the data analysis following traumatic fieldwork, and making sense of emotion in data.…”

Section: Approach To Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fieldwork trauma is a documented experience among researchers including research students (Pollard 2009;Clark 2017;Kanyeredzi 2018). Both Janine Natalya Clark (2017) and Ava Kanyeredzi (2018) discuss struggling with the data analysis following traumatic fieldwork, and making sense of emotion in data. While working through data transcription and analysis, I sought external supervision to assist with these experiences and took an extended break of several months.…”

Section: Approach To Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy for empowerment: the role of energy in women’s organising and empowerment in urban and peri-urban South Africa

Listo¹

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In feminist scholarship empowerment has been extensively theorised and critiqued, yet it has only recent emerged as a critical concept in energy and gender thinking. An emerging body of studies have begun to more critically theorise empowerment and the links with energy access, yet these studies give less emphasis to key aspects of empowerment as it is conceived by feminist scholars, including collectivity or community, process and social practice. In this thesis, I bring such elements into the conversation of energy, gender and empowerment, and so contribute to an ongoing tradition of feminist energy scholarship. The central aim is to explore the practices and experiences of women who are collectively organising to improve their energy systems, and the role of energy in the process of their empowerment. I do so in the context of urban and peri-urban contexts in South Africa, a country with its own tradition of gender-specialist and feminist researchers and advocates with a focus on energy. Specifically, I address: 1) How, and through what practices, are women collectively organising for better energy systems? 2) In what ways does organising for energy facilitate women's empowerment? 3) What role does energy play in transforming gendered identities and empowerment? My orientation is explicitly feminist and I am guided by a theoretical framework of feminist concepts, namely gender, empowerment and power. I hold the notion of empowerment with complexity, embracing the significant debates which underpin its theorisation. I investigate three case studies in urban and peri-urban South Africa, of organised groups of self-identifying women, such as people's movements, or women's committees, which are active at a local community level and supported by external NGOs. I have taken a feminist methodological approach, with the intention of transformative research practice and attention to both academic and political rigour. This included qualitative data collection methods, adapting a combination of narrative methods such as Oral History Interviews, and Collective Narrative Practice methods with both women and the NGOs to draw out stories and experiences of women as individuals and as collectives. I found that energy, rather than being a causal factor, is intertwined with broader societal institutions and norms which drive the conditions gendered disempowerment and inequality. Equally, energy is intertwined with femininities, conceived as shared expressions gender. In analysing the role of NGO interventions in shaping women's experiences of collective empowerment, I unearthed the significant influence of community practice in enabling empowerment. Finally, I examined women's experiences of empowerment, and the factors they identified as crucial to increasing their power. I found that while the materiality of energy played a role in this process, equally significant were intangible resources such as relationships, learning and theory, and skills, and in these contexts energy's immaterial nature was also significant. In examin...

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Working with survivors of war rape and sexual violence: fieldwork reflections from Bosnia-Hercegovina

Cited by 18 publications

References 27 publications

Helping or harming? NGOs and victims/-survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Helping or harming? NGOs and victims/-survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Finding a Voice: Silence and its Significance for Transitional Justice

Energy for empowerment: the role of energy in women’s organising and empowerment in urban and peri-urban South Africa

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