Different Shades Of The Past History As An Instrument Of Contemporary International Conflicts Przemysław łukasik by Przemysław Łukasik, Mateusz Kamionka 9783111000251, 3111000257 instant download after payment.

The conference volume consists of 12 articles and can be divided into two groups. The first group of articles deals with methodology and theory. The authors refer to the formulating and evolution of some theories and historical narratives (conflicts in international relations, the theory of democratic peace), but they also describe selected historical conflicts, by referring to the role of “tools” of historical narration, such as museums, monuments or new media. The second group of texts concerns cases of instrumentalisation of the past of a more general nature.
The first group of articles includes the text of Dovilė Budrytė, Georgia Gwinnett College, USA. In the paper “Conflicts over Memory and Political Crises: Insights from Lithuania and Ukraine” she examines how research into memory politics in Eastern Europe can address more serious problems regarding international relations (IR). Budryte argues that research on historical memory (politics) that is common in area studies could help to rethink the study of crises in IR by demonstrating how crises change discourses and yield opportunities for memories to be challenged and defended ‒ not only by the “strong,” but also by the “weak” (or “peripheral”) actors. To illustrate this argument, the paper presents a comparative study of memory politics in Ukraine and Lithuania, tracing major discursive changes, their domestic and international impact and offering a depiction of how hegemonic historical accounts were created before and during the 2013/2014 crisis in Ukraine and how they were contested in the aftermath of the crisis.