Description
Academic research has typically tended to analyse and understand armed groups and (ex-)combatants from either an economic or political/ideological angle. Bodily aspects, however, have largely remained unexplored, despite them being profound and multifaceted. Aiming to address this neglect of the body as such, and to dissolve the arguably artificial but often taken for granted separation of mind and body, I departed from an “embodied personhood” approach to explore the lived experiences and legacies of rebellion among ex-combatants in Burundi. My research is based on qualitative life history interviews with former combatants of the country’s two major rebel movements, which after the war turned into political parties and today constitute the main players in the country’s political arena. Against this backdrop I am not only interested in the ways in which rebellion has shaped the individual, but also in processes that might create, maintain, express and diminish groupness among (former) combatants. More specifically, I look at shared (bodily) group practices and experiences in the rebellion shaping the individual and fostering belonging to the group; the (embodied) memories created in the individual; practices and experiences after war that maintain or reduce groupness; and (political) action and behavior in which such processes result.
