Wars over a piece of land or a land of peace? Kosovo and Ukraine

Journal title SICUREZZA E SCIENZE SOCIALI
Author/s Vera Kopsaj
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2023/1
Language English Pages 15 P. 54-68 File size 211 KB
DOI 10.3280/SISS2023-001006
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Understanding the Ukrainian situation through the description of the Kosovo war is the aim of this study. The analysis will revolve around three pairs of con-cepts: identity and territory, emotions and revenge, memory and forgiveness. It will be discussed whether, in a war, it is possible to speak of personal and social forgiveness in Ricoeur’s terms. In this sense, the analysis will focus on the relation-ship between forgetting and memory, in particular on what birth (of new genera-tions) "could not erase", making an accumulation of memory of the facts that re-generate in an increasingly destructive collective revenge. If, in a war, breaking the rule of reciprocity is the way to forgiveness, this means taking away the power of guilt to oblige the future. Liberation from negative feelings, through loslassen or "letting go", opens up a new perspective that changes every kind of relationship, both between individuals and between Countries.

Keywords: war; Kosovo; Ukraine; identity; supremacy; emotions.

  1. Aït Abdelmalek A. (2005). Territoire et Profession. Essai Sociologique sur les formes de constructions identitaires modernes. Bruxelles: EME.
  2. Aron R., Mahoney D. J., Anderson B.C. (2017). Peace & war: a theory of international relations. London&New York: Routledge [ed. orig. 1966].
  3. Collins R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  4. Cooley C.H. (1964). Human nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken Books [ed. orig. 1902].
  5. Durham E.M. (2009). High Albania, Echo Library: Teddington [ed. orig. 1909].
  6. Durkheim E. (2001). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Oxford University Press [ed. orig. 1912].
  7. Gerard R. (2008). Portando Clausewitz all’estremo. Milano: Adelphi.
  8. Hawkins D.R. (2012). Letting go. The Pathway of Surrender. USA: Hay House.
  9. Hochschild A.R. (1975). The sociology of feeling and emotion: Selected possibilities. American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 85, n. 3: 551-575.
  10. Hochschild A.R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology Vol. 85, n. 3: 551-575.
  11. Jackson J.C., Choi V.K., Gelfand M.J. (2019). Revenge: A Multilevel Review and Synthesis. Annual Reviews, Vol. 70: 319-45.
  12. Jasper J.M. (2011). Emotions and social movements: Twenty years of theory and research. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 37: 285-303.
  13. Kemper T.D. (1978). A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions. New York: Wiley.
  14. Kemper T.D. (1978). Toward a Sociology of Emotions: Some Problems and some Solutions. The American Sociologist, Vol. 13: 30-41.
  15. King I., Mason W. (2011). Peace at any price: How the world failed Kosovo. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  16. Miglio G. (2022). Guerra, pace, diritto. Brescia: Scholé.
  17. Morin E. (2020). La fraternità perché? Resistenza alla crudeltà del mondo. Roma: AVE.
  18. Resta P. (2000). Ed. by, Il Kanun di Lek Dukagjini. Le basi morali e giuridiche della società albanese. Nardò, LE: Besa Editrice [ed. orig. 1996].
  19. Ricoeur P. (2004). Ricordare, dimenticare, perdonare. Bologna: il Mulino. [ed. orig. 1998].
  20. Scheff Th. (2003). Shame in Self and Society. Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 26, n. 2: 239-262.
  21. Scheff Th. (2013). Goffman on Emotions: The Pride-Shame System. Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 37, n. 1: 108-121.
  22. Sen A. (2008). Identità e violenza. Bari: Economica Laterza.
  23. Turner J.H., Stets J.E. (2006). Sociological Theories of Human Emotions. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 32: 25-52.
  24. Von Clausewitz K. (1942). Della Guerra. Roma: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.
  25. White G.W. (2000). Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe. USA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
  26. Young A. (2001). Women who became men. Albanian Sworn Virgins. Oxford: Berg [ed. orig. 2000].

Vera Kopsaj, Wars over a piece of land or a land of peace? Kosovo and Ukraine in "SICUREZZA E SCIENZE SOCIALI" 1/2023, pp 54-68, DOI: 10.3280/SISS2023-001006