2013 Brown Bag Series

Hussein Yusuf, a PhD student at S-CAR, will be presenting about his dissertation research at our last Brown Bag of the semester:

Mass violence and genocide of social groups in Europe and Africa, taking place along identity or sectarian lines, creates specific challenges not only to the development of post-conflict societies, but also hinders reconciliation and co-existence. As the world continues to struggle to understand hate narratives that contribute to state and communally perpetrated mass violence and terror, scholars have been trying to explore methods to create reconciliation after mass violence. What are the missing links? Methods of negotiations, power-sharing agreements, and the engagement of civil society including youth, have all tried to address the present and persistent problem of violence based on identity, with limited success. This presentation will focus on the Somali Diaspora in Ohio and Minnesota, members of a community that experienced horrific violence along identity lines. Yusuf argues that unless the events of 1988/91 are researched, and the stories of both victims and perpetrators are explored and narrated, the country will continue  to experience cycles of violence that devastate millions of Somali civilians. The research uses narratives analysis method to make sense of the stories of both victims and perpetrators of the violence of 1988/91 in Somalia.