From Wartime to Peacetime: War Experience and Post-conflict Resiliance

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Ellen Moodie (University of Illinois) and Dr. Arthur L. Binford (Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla) will undertake anthropological research on the effects of civil war on post-conflict societies. Anthropologists and other social scientists have documented the negative effects of civil war on post-conflict societies. In this project, the researchers will take a different approach to ask whether or not the ideologies, social relationships, skill development, and new forms of social organization developed during the war might contribute positively to postwar reconstruction and check social disintegration. The research will be carried out in northern Morazán, El Salvador, where the church, refugees, revolutionaries, and their supporters actively promoted collective action during the duration of the Salvadoran conflict (1980-1992). This study proposes to find out what remains of these pro-social, collectivist sentiments and practices, and whether or not they aid reconstruction. The research will focus on three organizations: the Ecclesial Base Community of El Salvador, the January 16th Cooperative, and a for-profit tourism business, which engage former refugees, demobilized rebel combatants, civilians and lay catechists. The researchers will employ a combination of archival work, surveys, life history interviews, organization histories, and participant observation with active members of the three organizations in order to gather information on pre-war, wartime, and post-war beliefs, relationships, and experiences. The investigators hypothesize that post-insurgent individuality will vary with the period of mobilization (early vs. late), level of wartime responsibility, and relative success in postwar reinsertion into civilian life. The study of individual subjects will be complemented by research on the organizations to which they belong, as the researchers will seek to measure the degree to which the church, cooperatives, and tourism promoters continue to promote communitarian values, even as the region is increasingly affected by social fragmentation and individualization brought on by incorporation into international circuits of migration. The research is significant because post-conflict situations are found throughout the world. The common assumption is that carryover from wartime is negative for individuals and communities. This project will test that assumption through systematic investigation of the possibility that pro-social values promoted during the war might contribute to post-war resilience, recovery, and reconstruction. Besides having practical implications, findings will contribute to social science theory of social change over time periods marked by extreme disruption. The research also provides social scientific training to two local field assistants; supports graduate student training; and promotes international research collaboration.