Description
With the help of the interdisciplinary concepts of “social trauma“and “narratives of conflict”, this paper draws up a framework that links existential anxieties triggered by war and displacement with the formation of group identities and national attachments. It applies and tests the theories on two current examples of conflict and war: Syria and Ukraine. On the basis of interviews with ordinary people affected by these conflicts, it collects their narratives of war and their future visions of peace. The paper posits that through people’s narratives of conflict, by remembering what happened to them as a group, they mold the meaning and boundaries of how the in-group will be membered post-war. The interviews are analyzed with mixed-methods, containing in-group and between-group comparisons to broadly gauge the emotional impact that these conflicts have on the people affected by them.
