It's not their job to soldier: distinguishing civilian and military in soldiers' and interpreters' accounts of peacekeeping in 1990s Bosnia-Herzegovina

Baker, Catherine

Abstract

Peacekeeping operations throw the use of specialized military forces and the aim of accomplishing change in a civilian environment into contradiction. Organizations with cultures that facilitate warfighting have to reorient themselves towards achieving peace and consent rather than victory, making peacekeeping a process of constant intercultural encounters between ‘military' and ‘civilian' as well as between ‘international' and ‘local'. The force's local employees, civilians necessary in the force's military tasks, inhabited a particularly ambiguous position. Based on more than 30 oral history interviews with peacekeepers and local interpreters who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this paper shows how four dimensions of cultural and bodily difference emerged from their narratives: uniforms, weapons, disruptiveness and training.

Citation

Baker, C. (2010). It's not their job to soldier: distinguishing civilian and military in soldiers' and interpreters' accounts of peacekeeping in 1990s Bosnia-Herzegovina. Journal of War and Culture Studies, 3(1), 137-150. https://doi.org/10.1386/jwcs.3.1.137_1

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 7, 2013
• Publication Date: 2010-05
• Deposit Date: Jun 19, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: Journal of War and Culture Studies
• Print ISSN: 1752-6272
• Electronic ISSN: 1752-6280
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 137-150
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/jwcs.3.1.137_1
• Keywords: Political Science and International Relations; History; Anthropology
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/473970
• Publisher URL: http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jwcs.3.1.137_1