School Communities, Historical Narratives and Reconciliation in E. Slavonia presented at the Symposium on Conflict, Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda

Discourses, historical memories and traumas that emerged from the processes of Croatian state and nation formation, war and transition towards peace, marked tectonic changes in status and relationships between Croat and Serb communities. Even sixteen years after the war has ended, stereotyping, absence of crossgroup friendships and lack of intergroup interaction highlights the divide between the two communities. This study seeks to explore how communities in the region of Eastern Slavonia (Croatia) make sense of the past in a postconflict context drawing from Foucault (1972), Fairclough (1993) and Tilly's (1999) ideas of discourses, social interaction and contention. Specifically, this study focuses on school communities that are positioned at the outposts or recipient end of the educational system, which has been the locus of clashes between official discourse of the past mainstreamed from above and different ethnic interpretations of history on the ground. My question is how those communities view contentious issues about the past, how this translates into their relationships with each other, and how we can learn from those communities about alternative and locally owned approaches to history education that would lead to reconciliation and sustainable peace.