AIMS

The aim of the project was to find out how parents’ experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia influenced their children born in Sweden after the war. The project aimed also to combine anthropological with psychodynamic concepts and methods. On the whole, the project was carried out successfully. The relevant international literature was further studied; the main fieldwork was carried out in 2014 and 2015, including participation in public cultural and social meetings, as well as more private contacts, observations, and loosely structured interviews with members of 20 families. The analysis was carried out as proposed, and the results so far published in Open Access.


THREE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

The research results show in a nuanced and complex way how the factual and emotional content in parental narratives, changes in children’s narratives. The children re-tell parental experiences so that they make sense in children’s contemporary Swedish context, and in this process the facts are often forgotten, mixed, or exaggerated; the meaningful social relationships are generalized; and the local events are abstracted to a more general historical and global human experience.

The parental stories about the war were meaningful to the children only when they were communicated together with emotions. The emotions were most often understood and re-narrated correctly by children, but the facts were changed in order to make sense in children’s perspective. When parental stories were devoid of emotions – in order to protect the children from the effects of their most adverse experiences - and presented as only dry facts, the children did not remember the stories, and the content was lost. This was especially true in cases where parents identified as victims or perpetrators, but more research on this finding would give a more precise picture of the significance of victim-perpetrator identities. When strong emotions were not explicitly expressed by the parents, and not substituted by emotionless facts, the children nevertheless understood them and re-interpreted in accordance with their own experiences.

The method of dynamic reflexivity (Maček 2017), common to both participant observation and psychotherapy, was developed within the project, and is an important result.

“European refugee crisis” in 2015/2016, woke rather suddenly public interest in reasons behind refugees’ success or failure to establish themselves in Sweden. A new – and politically urgent – field appeared in which the materials of this project were used. Swedish context proved to be the crucial factor for life quality in the aftermath of violence: more decisive than the adversity of parental war experiences, and the gravity of their posttraumatic symptoms while children were growing up. Another important factor were personal attitudes and psychological characteristics of parents. The more stable the parents were psychologically, the more constructive and pro-social were their attitudes and actions, the more successfully they established good living conditions for their families in Sweden. Research also indicated that some similarities between former Yugoslav and contemporary Swedish society, as well as the age of parents when they came to Sweden was important for the quality of their re-establishment. I have identified five distinct refugee age groups with crucially distinct experiences.

Family context, bridging the gap between individual and collective, is a slowly emerging field of study, especially within Memory Studies. The majority of research has so far focused on either individual (psychological research) or collective (anthropological and research in social sciences) context. The psychological research has mainly been concerned with positive or negative consequences of parental experiences on children, while the social analysis have shown the discrepancies between the individual and collective narratives. In this context of international research, this project bring original materials and shows more nuanced and complex analysis of phenomena.


NEW RESEARCH ISSUES

So far only the analysis of affective aspects in the materials has been integrated with anthropological concepts and methods (Maček 2017), and it needs to be developed into analysis of also attachment quality and mentalization capacities. For example, parents who showed a secure attachment style and good mentalization capacity in their intimate relationships, showed similar qualities also in larger social and public contexts, as in attitudes towards state authorities, or UN. The attachment styles and mentalization capacities were transmitted to children, who in their turn related in this way not only to intimate others, but also to schoolmates as well as their school work and careers.

Within the growing field of Memory Studies, the question how individual experience is gradually transformed into shared public knowledge, and perhaps eventually also generic, ideological, or mythical stories, would be an intriguing and politically important line of research to pursue further.


INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS

With publication of edited volume “Engaging Violence” in 2014 (result of Symposium “Trauma and Secondary Traumatization” financed by RJ in 2012), an international cross-disciplinary network of scholars was established, including Ervin Staub, Johanna Vollhardt, Jaan Valsiner, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and Suzanne Kaplan.

In the following years, I was often invited by an ever widening network of international scholars involved in the field of intergenerational transmission and cross-disciplinary methods, among others, Nerina Weiss, Allan Young, Linda Green, Nicolas Argenti, and Antonius Robben. I was invited speaker at several conferences (Copenhagen 2013; Athens 2013); examiner of PhD thesis (Kalina Yordanova, University College London, UCL 2014; Ivan Gusic, Malmö University 2017), member of scientific advisory board (University of Lausanne); contacted to review book manuscripts for publishers (Routledge, Berghahn Books, and University of California Press); have peer-reviewed articles for journals (Cultural Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, Transcultural Psychiatry, Conflict and Society, Political Psychology); and project proposals for foundations (Danish Velux Foundation in 2016, The Levrhulme Trust in 2017, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in 2017). I have organized or plan to organize three panels and present project’s research results in four papers forthcoming conferences (SANT 2017, AAA 2017, EASA 2018, Stockholm Roundtable 2018).


COMMUNICATING RESEARCH RESULTS OUTSIDE THE ACADEMY

Popular article: Maček (2016).

Paper ”Bosnier i Sverige: Varför gick det bra?”, Conference ”Syrien i Sverige. Samverkan mellan forskare och praktiker om aktuella integrationsfrågor i samhället”, Ethnographic Museum, Stockholm, 2016.

Public lecture ”Kan vi dra lärdomar från ’Balkanvågen?’” in series ”Sverige, migration och flyktingskap”, Stockholm, 2016.

Swedish Radio, 2016, discussion of the Red Cross research report ”Nyanlända och asylsökande i Sverige”, and e-mail contacts with several journalists in 2016 about the integration of Bosnian refugees in Sweden.


TWO MOST IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS

Maček (1): The chapter analyses family stories of parents’ war experiences, and follows the transmission and transformation of their content between different family members. While the factual content of parental stories is mostly lost, or changed through exaggeration, generalization, and globalization, there is a continuity of affects and moral values. For example, father’s rage over nationalism in Bosnia – although never explicitly communicated to the children - is correctly transmitted to the older daughter. However, her rage is not directed towards nationalism in Bosnia, which she does not find disturbing, but rather towards xenophobia and discrimination in general. In this way the parental rage is transmitted into rage and engagement (with current crisis in Syria) that is meaningful for her generation in Sweden today.

Maček (2017): This article develops and describes method of dynamic reflexivity, common to both participant observation and psychotherapy, in order to follow the affects and facts in war narratives of different family members. Here, too, it is shown how facts and affects are transmitted, changed, or lost. In particular, the method enabled the analysis of a young child’s drawing as a form of re-narration of parental war narrative.


PUBLICATION STRATEGY

Maček 2016 and 2017 – published in Open Access.

Maček (1) and (2) can be published in Open Access for a standard price of $2,600.

Two yet not completed book manuscripts (one on reasons for successful establishment of Bosnians in Sweden; the other on interdisciplinary concepts and methods), can be published in Open Access at Palgrave Macmillan for $12,000 (Pivot), or $17,000 (standard monograph). Also University of Pennsylvania Press has expressed interest in these publications.


PUBLICATIONS AND WEBBSITE

Maček, Ivana (2016) ”Skam, skuld och upprättelse,” in Krig/fred. RJ:s årsbok 2016/2017 (eds Jenny Björkman and Arne Jarrick). Open Access.

Maček, Ivana (2017) “’It starts to burn a little’: Intergenerational Transmission of Experiences of War within a Bosnian Family in Sweden,” in "Generations and Memory: Continuity and Change", a special issue of the journal Oral History Forum d'histoire orale. Katherine Bischoping and Yumi Ishii (eds).(in press, open access)

Maček, Ivana (1) “Transmission and Transformation of the Sarajevan Siege”, in Alex Dowdall and John Horne, eds., From Sarajevo to Troy: civilians under siege. Palgrave Macmillan (chapter accepted for publication)

Maček, Ivana (2) “Perpetrators among Ourselves,” in Approaching Perpetrators: Insights on Ethics, Methods, and Theory, Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee (eds). University of Wisconsin Press (article accepted, the volume in the peer-review process)

Webbpage: http://www.socant.su.se/english/research/our-researchers/ivana-ma%C4%8Dek