Projects / Programmes
Practices of conflict resolution between customary and statutory law in the area of today's Slovenia and its neighbouring lands
January 1, 2022
- December 31, 2027
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.01.00 |
Humanities |
Historiography |
|
| 6.03.00 |
Humanities |
Anthropology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.01 |
Humanities |
History and Archaeology |
| 6.03 |
Humanities |
Philosophy, Ethics and Religion |
conflict resolution, violence, enmity, vengeance, banishment (exile), rituals, ceremonies, mediation, peacemaking, emotions, gender, trauma, memory, fairy tales, digital humanities, interdisciplinarity, cross-cultural, Slovenia, Europe, 1500-2000
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 28, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
68 |
203 |
171 |
2.51 |
| Scopus |
71 |
238 |
199 |
2.8 |
Researchers (13)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The research programme (RP) addresses practices of conflict resolution between individuals, kinship groups and communities (local, confessional (i.e. during the Reformation), class (i.e. peasant uprisings), national (wars)) in today's Slovenia and neighboring countries in the modern period and contemporary history. The research on vengeance will begin at a time when national historiographies usually end it, i.e. in the transition period from the Middle Ages to modernity. Special emphasis will be on the implementation of the procedures of so-called learned law as a consequence of the rise of towns from the 12th c., the beginnings of the more intensive establishment of the central authorities with the introduction of inquisitorial trial process from the 15th century up until to the prevalence of statutory law in the 19th c. With its emphasis on the broadest traditional practices of conflict resolution, the RP, despite its fundamental starting point in historiography, is necessarily interdisciplinary (incorporating findings from anthropology, sociology, ethnology, psychology, culturology, law, literary studies and art history). Predicated on an interdisciplinary approach with the analysis, comparison and (re)interpretation of hitherto literature and the investigation of published and unpublished original historical sources for the territory of today's Slovenia, the RP will investigate the spread of and forms of the custom of vengeance among all social strata, its importance for European cultural heritage and its civilizational and cultural image. Special emphasis will also be on research questions of the role of emotions (enmity, humility, honour, friendship, love etc.) in rituals of conflict resolution. An important emphasis will be also on the consequences of (un)successful conflict resolution in contemporary history and on the (traumatic) memories or testimonies of war and post-war events in Slovenia, as well as on a deepened understanding of the relationship between historical and political context and fairy tales and their social and political function. The RP is connected to new digital technologies, especially digital humanities, with the aim of a permanent preservation of research data and results and their wide dissemination among both the scientific and general public. For this purpose, the RP aims to create a digital archive, which will consist of several segments: 1) archive of dispute resolution cases, 2) iconographic archive, 3) archive of fairy tales and short stories, 4) archive of oral history.
Significance for science
During our past and ongoing projects, members of the research programme have established thatthat practices of conflict resolution in Slovene lands in the modern period and contemporary history are a neglected field of research. Hitherto, only a few studies have addressed these phenomena and even they have investigated only until the 1650s. Especially notable is the lack of studies on the social dimension of the custom of vengeance, incl. its emotional, mnemonic and gendered aspects, which holds true for most European historiographies, with the notable exception of the Italian, which, however, remains focused on urban areas. Although the RP is predicated on recent research, it provides an important contrast particularly because of its focus on rural areas in Slovene lands and neighbouring Adriatic and Central European regions. The RP will also significantly upgrade hitherto research on the feud in the Holy Roman Empire, which focuses on nobility and stops in the early 1600s, since later periods are regarded as a 'time after the feud', when litigation is said to have substituted other traditional practices of conflict resolution. Hence, the RP will significantly upgrade European research and contribute an important comparative element to the mosaic of customs in communities and cultures across the world through its position in the broader global frame of research questions in the fields of community conflict resolution. The RP will also put particular attention on contemporary social problems in the Slovene community, which pertain to the central questions of (not) resolving past conflicts. While Slovene researchers have in the past years gradually begun to study contested memory and its impact on today's society, the traumatic impact of this memory has remained completely overlooked. Since society did not address the traumatic impact and consequences of the conflict and its accompanying events in the years and decades after World War II, this had a particularly negative impact not only on individuals, but also on families and society at large. Thus, the approach, which considers the traumatic nature of events and their impact on society, is completely new to the Slovene scientific discussion of the past. An important contribution to the development of science is also the creation of a digital archive, which is an important introduction of digital humanities into scientific research. In this way, the RP will be in accordance with the European Commission's latest guidelines on open science and its FAIR principles, which will enable us to effectively and permanently preserve research data and results and their open access. The RP, despite historiography as its primary starting point, is necessarily set as interdisciplinary and anticipates the collaboration with and integration of findings and researchers from anthropology, sociology, ethnology, psychology, culturology, law, literary studies and art history. Other established international researchers in the field will also be included in the implementation of this RP as its advisory board (AB). We will establish a wide international network for future research and research project applications and stimulate the career-building and inclusion of a young generation of researchers to further develop the field.
Significance for the country
The research programme's (RP) indirect importance for economy and society lies particularly in the usefulness of its results to various target groups like tourist workers, formal and informal educators (primary and high schools, faculties, programmes of life-long learning). The results can be of use to public institutions managing socioeconomic development and improving education, intercultural communication and the preservation of cultural history. RP results will be included into the higher pedagogical process, as group members are also lecturers (2 full and 2 assistant professors) in university study programmes. Substantive, methodological and theoretical novelties will be directly or indirectly used in various study programmes of history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, culturology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, law and literary studies. RP results will contribute to the improvement of the quality and competitiveness of Slovene science and higher education at the European and broader international level. The research will be useful to planning history classes, as themes of past vengeance are always popular with primary and high-school students, and the same is true for the broader public. Likewise, local cases of vengeance, which are a popular tourist attraction, can be offered as stories for tourist products. Thereby we will contribute to a closer networking of culture, science and education with the aim to raise the quality of research and teaching. For Slovenia the proposed RP will also be important for the knowledge and appropriate evaluation of Slovene and European cultural heritage and history. The research also forms the basis for surveying, evaluating and maintaining (tangible and intangible) cultural heritage and its use for cultural purposes, stimulating creativity and the development of new products. The RP's added value is in our application of the issue of (not) resolving conflicts to one of the central collective traumas of Slovene history, the memory of World War II and post-war events, which has thus far remained untouched by historical and even by wider professional discussion. The proposed RP is of further importance to the development of society, because it will take into account memories and testimonies of those who lived during those events as well as testimonies of their descendants. It is our aim to emphasize that testimonies are essential to questions of contested and traumatic memory and that bearers of traumatic memory have to be given their place in historiography. If this is not done we give space to the politicization of uncritical recapitulations of personal experience and testimonies, which causes growing division and the deepening of ideological conflicts, as we can see in today's Slovenia. By connecting our research and its results to digital humanities, we will digitise and include all the data we can into an online database, thus following the European Commission's guidelines for open science and open access of research results and research data. This will allow a re-use of collected data by the professional and the broader public. Today, the usefulness of the studies of practices of conflict resolution (e.g. vengeance, enmity, peacemaking and reconciliation) - especially of community mediation, which, predicated on historical findings, also provides comparative conditions for the implementation of deliberative democracy - is growing, also due to the negative social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic (deterioration of social relations, exacerbation of existing antagonisms) and the imminent climate crisis (shortage of arable land and potable water, mass migration), which, however, despite their much larger scope, are not without historical parallels. Especially in the modern period, communities across Europe had to face similar problems, as our RP will show.
