international seminar november 2004

A two-week orientation and goal setting seminar took place in November 2004, at the Institute on Violence and Survival (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities / University of Virginia), Charlottesville, VA, and was co-organized with The Center for International Studies and Research (CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, France).
Click here to see VFH newsletter on the seminar

Participants Some twenty-eight scholars, practitioners and activists came together to share their thoughts about post-massacre issues. Click here for the picture

This intensive seminar involved extensive discussions about the overall framework of the research-action effort, its methodology, objectives and main topics, as well as the possible exchanges to be developed between countries.
All seminar attendees possess personal knowledge of war and massacre, had worked in the field in post-massacre communities, or were second generation survivors of massacres. Those from the project field sites included survivors of conflict or repression in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, and Guatemala. 
Click here to access the list of participants

Theory & field experiences
As this project aims to develop theory in the areas of collective trauma and cultural meaning, the re-claiming of symbols and belief systems after trauma, and the moral dimensions of massacre, as well as to develop field projects based on such theories, it was important that we take time to clarify our theoretical underpinnings and assumptions.  They guide our work, and when clearly articulated, they can offer us even more ideas and allow us to share practical and program-related goals.  The seminar gave us time to discuss our most basic reasoning about why we do what we do, how our personal experiences shape our theoretical positions, and what our perspectives suggest for the overall outlines and guidelines of the projects we may undertake.  For this part of the seminar, people shared what they saw as the fundamental elements of their approach to programming in the field; this included a very tense and at times painful sharing of personal experiences as survivors of violence. We have also looked at projects and methods we were already using or wishing to use, sharing these with each other, discussing why they work and what is necessary to make them work, and so on.
Click here to access a presentation of country experiences.

This trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary exchange occupied most of the time spent at the seminar, in part due to the fact that we had to manage many different languages all at once (even though English was used as the main lengua franca). For various participants, it was the first time that they were exposed to other experiences and had to make this effort to connect these with their own lives, putting aside all kinds of pre-conceptions they may have had beforehand about what happened on the other side of the planet.

Online resources
This event did indeed create a sense of shared experience; all parties were moved and often surprised at the similarities across cultures and time regarding post-conflict realities.  Most also recognized the limitations of existing theoretical frames that explained what they encountered, and the paucity of frames that would generate ideas for action.  The group parted with the mission from the central administrators for more theoretical work be done, based on materials from the field, and that an iterative process of theory-action thinking be initiated among participants. The material developed thus far in this area may be accessed through our ‘online resources’.