How Memorialization of Conflict Alters the Legacies of Violence

• In Event: Attitudinal Responses to Violence

Abstract

The conventional view in the literature on the legacies of violence holds that the original experience of violence has a direct effect on victims and their descendants. We problematize this view, noting that political entrepreneurs seek to alter the legacy of violence through manipulation of historical memory. To test whether the manipulation of historical memory alters the legacies of violence we study a natural experiment in the Spanish Civil War whereby the assignment of violence was orthogonal to the political characteristics of affected settlements. Leveraging the data on actual violence during the civil war, an original dataset on historical memorials, and outcome measures of political preferences and behavior from an original survey we ask whether (i) the pattern of memorialization faithfully reflects the experience of violence, and (ii) whether present-day attitudes and behavior are a legacy of the original experience of violence or of the subsequent policy of memorialization. We find that contemporary attitudes are often a product of memorialization rather than the original experience of violence. These findings suggest an important corrective in the field of legacy studies.

Authors

• Joan Barcelo, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Leonid Peisakhin, New York University - Abu Dhabi