This panel presents a social scientific journey into the material construction of publics and their spaces under the specific materiality of the contemporary world. One of the themes, language is perhaps the most material element in this construction since it involves in everything, material and immaterial. The studies all deal with locales, indeed publics, that either live directly under conditions of war and military conflict or indirectly yet significantly experience the human consequences of such violent conditions, past or present, thereby bringing also to the table questions of migration and the sociopolitical contest over public memory, a universal terrain of struggle.
Public Space Under Drone Strikes / Vasja Badalič
The paper examines the impact of drone strikes on the use of public space by the civilian population in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The paper is divided in two parts. The first part examines how three too-broad criteria for determining targets of drone strikes blurred the line between combatants and civilians, thus causing imprecise drone strikes killing and maiming civilians. The first criterion was based on the idea that all adult males standing in proximity of known combatants were legitimate military targets; the second criterion was that first responders who rushed to the site of a drone strike were legitimate targets; and the third criterion presupposed that individuals were legitimate targets if they regularly communicated <through mobile phones with known combatants. The second part of the paper examines how imprecise drone strikes and the drones’ constant presence terrorized civilians living in the targeted areas and, consequently, limited their use of public space when engaging in a wide variety of daily activities (e.g. attending jirgas, community-based conflict resolution process; attending funerals; going to school; helping victims of drone strikes; visiting private houses and hujras, drawing rooms where guests are entertained). The paper shows how drone attacks significantly altered the use of public space in the targeted areas.
Opening London’s Public Spaces For Refugee Women: A Methodological Approach To Human Capabilities Action Research / Konrad Miciukiewicz
This paper reflects upon a methodological approach to human capabilities action research developed in a study that addressed experiential quality of urban public space among Somali refugee women in London. This paper explains the approach we have taken in action research that brought together social science research, awareness raising, policy advocacy and capacity building. By definition, refugees are produced through multiple, shifting, volatile geographic and historical political terrains. In London, as they engage with place-making, they still must negotiate complex power-geometries in multicultural urban space wherein social relations are a constant reminder of unsettlement, refused rights, and elusiveness of sanctuary that is never guaranteed but must be continuously pursued. I mobilise this case study to argue that for the urban public realm to meet growing economic and political demands, design of space and policy must recognize both social conflict and multicultural dialogue as inherent challenges of urban social life. A broader civic participation requires relational, flexible recalibration of sociopolitical contexts and citizens, in their concrete reality and through recognized communicative and mediating practices, as well as through instituting or endowing of rights and resources. The paper enquires into the role of transdisciplinary research and researchers in this process. We approached this challenge through the capabilities framework (Sen 1993 and Nussbaum 2000) which attempts to bridge gaps between formal entitlements and actual capacity to claim access to rights and resources. The research and practice-based project was carried out in Kentish Town, the London Borough of Camden, in collaboration with the Somali Youth Development Resource Centre (SYDRC), London Borough of Camden, Metropolitan Police and Transport for London. The objective was to understand and to improve the experience of Somali refugee women in key public spaces in the neighbourhood. Pursuant to this broad objective we mobilised a mix of qualitative and action research methods including focus groups, in-depth interviews, walking interviews, expert interviews, mapping of routes and routines, ethnographic participant-observation, and photographic documentation. All participants were women in hijab, mostly between 20s- 50s years old. Both through the research practices and through personal experience we were invited into the narrative circuits through which they continuously develop, maintain and question their collective imaginaries of space. We identified the challenges they face, their critical socio-spatial practices as well as potential actions, by the women themselves and public agencies, which could improve their spatial experience. A follow-up practice- led project titled ‘Innovative Camden: Somali Public Space Champions’ supported by the Camden Innovation and Development Fund recruited a cohort of public space champions among Somali women between 16 and 25 years of age for the period of 18 months. The public space champions engaged a broader community in a set of activities that mobilised London’s public realm for political, economic, and cultural empowerment of Somali women of Camden. The paper is structured in four sections that explore four steps that illuminated our endeavours: (i) the assessment of Somali women’s experiences in public space; (ii) critical inquiry into social, spatial, and political factors shaping experience of public space; (iii) exploration of salient potentials and opportunities; and (iv) the design of public policies and programs to support capacity building.
Places of/for alternative historical memories/narratives / Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc
While official political representatives use hegemonic power to create public memories and promote particular historical interpretations (e.g. through public commemorations and official holidays), there are grassroots memory-making initiatives that promote alternative historical narratives. This project sheds additional light on this under-researched topic. Differently from intimate, private and family memories, public memory-making takes place in public space and infuses it with meanings. Through acts of “public remembering”, those who remember are also expressing their claims on public space and its reinterpretation. Therefore, public memory-making is always simultaneously process of placemaking. This research project has intention to examine civil-society based and grassroots mnemonic agents, and to analyse their initiatives, not only as discussion about the “adequate” interpretation of the past, but also as an intervention into public space, as a social and democratic innovation in its own right. Particularly, project will focus on “alternative” mnemonic agents who organise “alternative” commemorations in the public spaces (e.g. a city square) across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH). The dynamic between official and alternative memory-making is particularly interesting in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) since it is one of the rare countries that has no common state-wide set of public holidays and memorial days. Instead, the division into two federal units and the dominance of three ethnically defined political elites have created a complex setting of spatially and socially separate memoryscapes. Each of the ethno-national elites uses hegemonic power within their reach to organise (mostly) ethnically exclusive commemorations and narrate their version of history, especially the 1992-95 war. However, in the recent period a range of civil-society organisations and informal groups have started openly confronting dominant memory-making by organising alternative commemorative events. In the context when elite-driven memory-making has been reproducing mutually conflicting interpretations of the last war which are used as arguments in the on-going political battles, these alternative memorial events seem to be aiming at transformation of the dominant ethno-nationalistic historical narratives. Following the analytical framework of “memory activism” (Gutman 2017), the project examines to what extent these commemorative events are being created in the spirit of trans-ethnic solidarity, advocating for acknowledgement of the victims forgotten in a particular memoryscape, and challenging dominant conceptions of war victims and perpetrators. The research project wants to analyse how these mnemonic agents perceive the purpose of their own engagement, creation of (alternative) public memory and placemaking as a collaborative process. Through analysis of media reporting on these events, the research also examines reactions of the ethno-national elites to the memory activism. Therefore, the research will also pay attention to larger public debate on the right to the usage of (what is considered to be) “public space”, and (mis)usage of public realm in resassessing common values, identities, and memories. The host organisation – Association for culture and art CRVENA (Sarajevo) – is working, among other things, on the topic of remembering and forgetting (e.g. previous projects: Lost revolution: Antifascist Front of Women (AFŽ) between Myth and Oblivion; Geopolitical Zones of the Present; Factory of Memories). I expect they could be relevant informants themselves, and could provide me with contacts of other civil-society actors doing some kind of memory- work.
When local words become public / Tjaša Jakop
This lecture (panel) would be of a linguistic nature. We would examine the intrusion of dialectical words in central Slovenian slang of capital Ljubljana: examples like dialect words from different – mainly peripheral parts of Slovenia, i.e. expressions like pupa ‘girl’, greeting expressions, for example čao (< Italian ciao ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’) originally from western part of the country (Littoral dialect group) or itak ‘however’ from eastern – Styria dialect area.
We will also discuss tabooed words (i.e. names for genitals (sexual organs, cursing etc.), where one can expect a large variety and diversity of lexemes, and various morphological phenomena (i. e. feminine dual forms such as greve, delave ‘we (two women) go/ work’) in slang. Slovenian is namely one of few Indo-European languages to have preserved a dual number but the differentiation of gender in dual can nowadays only be found in some (local) dialects; it does not exist in Standard Slovenian, but has recently (in the last 10–15 years) been reintroduced in the present-day central Slovenian slang (so called Ljubljana colloquial speech). The slang of central Slovenia (as well as the colloquial languages of bigger towns) is changing due to the invasion of these dialectal (or local) forms, and this way people begin to use dialectal (local) expressions in their speech. What is normal in a particular environment, latter becomes special (a novelty) in the other – more central and urban environment. At the same time, these previously local (dialectal) forms and expressions are being increasingly used by the public; the public adopts them, and this way forms or words become part of the public, and thus repeatedly (pre)shape the public.
Users from central area are mostly unaware these expressions and forms came from periphery and were in the (recent) past been used very locally and on a small geographic area. They are also unaware of the influences of the other languages (especially from languages in contact). This shows us that not only the centre with its capital city influences the peripheral towns and regions but the opposite can happen as well. The methods of data gathering, its digitalisation and analysing will be presented at the panel.
Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi (Hafıza Merkezi, engl. Truth Justice Memory Center)
Vasja Badalič is a research fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia. His primary fields of research are contemporary imperialism and the “war on terror” (e.g. the impact of the “war on terror” on the civilian population in Afghanistan and Pakistan), migration (e.g. EU’s migration policy on its external borders and refugees’ rights in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria), and workers’ rights in “third-world” countries (e.g. workers’ rights in export processing zones). He combines theory with extensive field-work, frequently visiting the Middle East and Central Asian countries, in particular Afghanistan and Pakistan. Currently, he works on a project called Crimmigration between human rights and surveillance.
He is the author of three single-authored monographs: The Terror of ‘Enduring Freedom’: War in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Krtina Publishing house, Ljubljana 2013 (in Slovenian); The Red Machinery: The Beat of Chávez’s Revolution, Študentska založba Publishing house, Ljubljana 2011 (in Slovenian); and For 100 Euros a Month: The Production System of Global Capitalism, Krtina Publishing House, Ljubljana 2010 (in Slovenian).
Before joining the Institute of Criminology, Vasja Badalič worked as a freelance journalist, reporting for Slovenian news media from the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria), Central Asia (Afghanistan), South Asia (India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan), and Latin America (Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua). His work frequently appeared in Slovenian newspapers and magazines such as Delo, Dnevnik, Večer, and Mladina. He continues writing for Slovenian news media. He has appeared many times on Slovenian radio and television as an expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Within the RISE project, Vasja Badalič would like to cooperate with organizations interested in research on contemporary imperialism and the “war on terror”, migration, and the exploitation of workers in “third world” countries.
Konrad Miciukiewicz is Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity. He is a social innovation and public engagement expert with extensive experience in running large scale international research projects and wide-ranging background in Sociology, Cultural Studies, Urban Studies and Advertising. Before joining UCL he worked as strategist and copywriter at several advertising agencies in Poland, Germany and Iceland, and as a post-doctoral researcher at the Global Urban Research Unit in Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. While at Newcastle he was involved in a number of large European research and innovation projects, including SOCIAL POLIS, KATARSIS and SPINDUS, that explored issues of social and spatial innovation, multiculturalism and democracy in urban settings. Konrad’s present research is concerned with the role that the urban public realm and the cultural and creative industries play in urban socio-economic development. He has published in Urban Studies, Cities, International Planning Studies and Journal of Urban Design.
Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, part of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She has been awarded the 2015 Jean Blondel PhD Prize for the best thesis in politics (issued by the European Consortium for Political Research), which was defended at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (title: “Public Narratives of the Past in the Framework of Transitional Justice Processes: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina”) in 2014. She obtained her BA from Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, and in parallel a BSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2006. Subsequently, she gained her MA in Nationalism Studies from Central European University in 2008. As a doctoral fellow funded by Slovenian Research Agency she worked at the Peace Institute, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, Ljubljana, from 2009 to 2013. Her post-doctoral project “Dealing with the past: putting Slovenia in comparative perspective” (financed by Slovenian Research Agency) examines whether/how the processes of establishing facts about the past criminal events changes the dominant historical perceptions in a society. Her research field is the politics of the past and public memory of the crimes which happened during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and during the Second World War. She has been researching the impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on the post-Yugoslav states, as well as the reproduction of the historical narratives in the school textbooks.
Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi (Hafıza Merkezi, engl. Truth Justice Memory Center) is an independent human rights organization set up by a group of lawyers, journalists and human rights activists in November 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. Hafıza Merkezi aims to uncover the truth concerning past violations of human rights, strengthen the collective memory about those violations, and support survivors in their pursuit of justice. Hafıza Merkezi implements a range of activities, including documentation in accordance with the universally accepted standards, monitoring of precedent cases, as well as dissemination of marginalized truths and narratives on these violations to a large section of society, with a view to support the recognition and rehabilitation of victims of such atrocities. Hafıza Merkezi uses a unique approach, as it gathers and accumulates knowledge and methodology from organizations dealing with similar issues in other post-conflict and post-authoritarian regions, develops them further through its everyday work and adapts the know-how into the Turkish context.