Research on the transmission of war memory is of great significance for sociology and psychology, memory studies, particularly for understanding the post-war social and psychological context of family memory, i.e. family dynamics and the nature of coping strategies.
This project will consider specific legacies of the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tens of thousands eventually fled to safer parts of Bosnia or to other countries; many never returned. Now, a generation on, the memories of that war continue to evolve with largely unknown consequences for emotional health, identity, or social cohesion. The proposed research focuses on the intergenerational transmission of the memory of war, exploring its sources and mechanisms. The focus will be on families who lived in Sarajevo during the war. I will examine the intergenerational transmission of the memory of war through two memory processes: retelling and recalling. The main aim of this research will be to examine if the memory of lived historical events was transmitted from the generation of participants/witnesses to the generation of non-participants/non-witnesses; for short: from parents to children.
Before examining the research questions, this paper will provide a systematic review of the interdisciplinary literature to date on intergenerational transmission of memories among families. This systematic review will map available studies evaluating and exploring the intergenerational transmission of memory and identify possible differences in memory transmission in two conditions (war and without war). Evidence of specific intergenerational transmission of memory is scattered over a landscape of numerous disciplines (psychology, anthropology, history, political sciences) with variations in methodology and approaches; this study may allow a solid scientific basis to enrich the evidence for transmitted memory through generations(Arksey & O'Malley 2005).
With this paper, I would like to raise a few methodological dilemmas and questions
