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- All Subjects: Civil war
- Creators: Dallett, Nancy
- Creators: Kittilson, Miki
Description
A growing body of literature has sought to explain the nature and effects of conflict-related sexualized violence. However, a critical problem that persists concerns why wartime rape varies both within and across conflicts. Political science literature mainly addresses these questions of variation in sexualized violence through group-level or structural explanations. Yet, clear patterns of combatant non-participation in conflict-related sexualized violence is apparent, even in cases where sexual violence is severe and pervasive. What allows one combatant to refrain, while another combatant, even within the same combat unit, perpetrates sexualized violence? In this dissertation, I argue that critical differences concerning attitudes, beliefs, and motivations exist between individual combatants. In light of these differences, I reintroduce the individual combatant onto the theoretical map as a critical unit of analysis and I explore the implications of gender inequality as an important and relevant factor related to sexualized violence in political conflict. Drawing on findings from social psychology, political psychology, sociology, and political science, the theory developed argues that combatants differentially internalize important norms related to gender that become particularly activated based on primarily externalized contextual influences. To test the theory, I conduct a mixed-method, sub-national comparative analysis of combatants and attitudes and beliefs associated with gender inequality during the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995). I rely on qualitative data generated from semi-structured, comprehensive interviews with psychologists, victim’s advocates, and legal experts managing sexual violence war crimes cases, and combat veterans directly associated with the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995) to assess differences at the individual-level of analysis. To additionally determine the broader effects of gender inequality, I employ an ordered probit regression analysis to ascertain the relationship between gender inequality related to institutional health and education factors and the severity of wartime rape. The combined results of these analyses demonstrate that individual differences between combatants better predicts the likelihood of a combatant to commit sexualized violence compared to structural or institutional accounts alone.
ContributorsWilliamson, Holly, Ph.D (Author) / Kittilson, Miki (Thesis advisor) / Lake, Milli (Committee member) / Wood, Reed (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This thesis examines the evolution of the interpretation of the battle of Gettysburg, as well as how the analysis and presentation of the battle by multiple stakeholders have affected the public's understanding of the violence of the engagement and subsequently its understanding of the war's repercussions. While multiple components of the visitor experience are examined throughout this thesis, the majority of analysis focuses on the interpretive wayside signs that dot the landscape throughout the Gettysburg National Military Park. These wayside signs are the creation of the Park Service, and while they are not strictly interpretive in nature, they remain an extremely visible component of the visitor's park experience. As such, they are an important reflection of the interpretive priorities of the Park Service, an agency which is likely the dominant public history entity shaping understanding of the American Civil War. Memory at Gettysburg in the first decades after the battle largely sought to focus on celebratory accounts of the clash that praised the valor of all white combatants as a means of bringing about resolution between the two sides. By focusing on triumphant memories of martial valor in a conflict fought over ambiguous reasons, veterans and the public at large neglected unsettling and difficult conversations. These avoided discussions primarily concerned what the war had really accomplished aside from preserving the Union, as white Americans appeared unwilling to confront the war's abolitionist legacy. Additionally, they avoided discussion of the horrific levels of violence that the war had truly required of its combatants. Reconciliationist memories of the conflict that did not discuss the violence and trauma of combat were thus incorporated into early interpretations of Civil War battlefields, and continued to hinder understanding of the true savagery of combat into the present. This thesis focuses on the presence (or lack thereof) of violence and trauma in the wayside interpretive signage at Gettysburg, and argues that a more active interpretation of the war's remarkably violent and traumatic legacies can assist in dislodging a faulty legacy of reconciliationist remembrance that continues to permeate public memory of the Civil War.
ContributorsPittenger, Jack (Author) / Simpson, Brooks D. (Thesis advisor) / Schermerhorn, Calvin (Committee member) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013