Review: A Different Kind of War Story

Class: Critical Issues: Genocide, War and Violent Conflict

Instructor: Richard McCutcheon
By Carsten Kaefert (3012875)

Table of Contents
Review: A Different Kind of War Story...........................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................1
A Peace Story..............................................................................................................................1
Challenging Social Science.........................................................................................................3
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Skeletons, yes, that is a good word – we are living skeletons of the war.1

It is these people's, these skeletons' story that Carolyn Nordstrom tells in A Different Kind

of War Story – it is the story of the long and outstandingly brutal civil war that wreaked havoc in

Mozambique from 1975 to 1992. It is not the usual narrative of armies and parties waging war,

of international influences and interests, but rather the of the people who actually lived through

the war. And it is in part Nordstrom's own story, as she visited and studied the country during the

war. But most of all it is a challenge to the way war is studied.

A Peace Story
The violence I am talking about here is of the worst kind. There is no way to

romanticize or glorify what took place in Mozambique during these years, except, that

is, what means many noncombatant civilians undertook on their own to stop the war.

It is my opinion that average Mozambican citizens instituted a series of conflict

1 Flavia, a womanfriend of Carolyn Nordstrom, in: Carolyn Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 180.

Carsten Kaefert: Review: A Different Kind of War Story→A Peace Story Page 1/5
 resolution practices that are among the most refined I have seen anywhere in the

world. For me, they stand as a model of resolving political violence and rebuilduing

battle-scarred communities that can assist other communities and countries embroiled

in similar excesses of violence.2

This passage clearly points out how misguiding naming Nordstrom's book a war story can

be: It is actually a story about peace. About how ordinary people can construct a new world in

the midst of doom. This makes it a somewhat enlightening read, as this close-up perspective

tends to be drowned by statistics in other accounts.

Although providing many examples for Mozambican conflict resolution strategies,

Nordstrom fails to fulfill the promise, as she is not able to produce them as a model. As she

admits, the Mozambican strategies cannot even be transferred to the very similar case of Angola,3

much less so to other cases such as the Sri Lankan one.4 This opens the door for another, way

more pessimistic reading of her findings: Although the Mozambican society provides these

sophisticated peacebuilding measures, many others do not. Although Mozambicans did not

identify themselves with any of the warring factions on a large scale, others do so with their

respective ones.5 Given that despite this obvious potential for peace – and a strong will to

achieve it – the Mozambican civil war still went on for 17 years, killing around one million

people, this interpretation provides a way more dim view on humanity.

A slight change in perspective can light up the outlook significantly. To look away from the

atrocities committed at any given moment and turn the head towards the next village, fearing the

2 Nordstrom, Another Kind... 40.

3 cf. ibid. 229.
4 cf. ibid.
5 cf. ibid.

Carsten Kaefert: Review: A Different Kind of War Story→A Peace Story Page 2/5
next attack or recovering from the last one. This is the direction Nordstrom looks: People

remaining humane, remaining actual people in between outbursts of war frenzy. She underlines

the importance of this perspective by describing how war was at any time only perpetuated by a

small minority of less than one per cent of the whole population.6 Nevertheless, the question

remains: If even in a society that has the aforementioned good preconditions and a strong

tendency towards creating positive, peaceful social institutions, cruelty and war can go on so

devastatingly long, does that not rather support a dim Hobbesian view7 (at least on a meso- or

macro scale) than contradict it? Could not Nordstrom's notion that structures of peace among

people preceded and were prerequisites to peace accords among factions be read just in the

opposite way: that despite this informal structures violence could not be ended without formal

structures in place?

Challenging Social Science

Apart from questioning our perceptions about war, violence and society, Nordstrom does

something potentially far more influential on the way social science is conducted: She challenges

its way to perceive. She does so profoundly – and probably rightfully, although questions remain.

Most basically, Nordstrom questions the very basis of research: text (ironically, she does so

in writing). To her, experience is necessary to know a topic.8 Furthermore, experience cannot be

gathered through narrative.9 This differentiation between narrative and experience is central to

the challenge she poses to established social sciences:

6 cf. ibid. 212.

7 cf. ibid. 12.
8 cf. ibid. 23.
9 cf. ibid.

Carsten Kaefert: Review: A Different Kind of War Story→Challenging Social Science Page 3/5
 I tell this story to demonstrate that narrative organizes experience after the fact.

Though the narratives may reaffirm past violences, infusing old into new, they will

never be the raw primary experience of which they speak. They can never be

synchronous with what the “tell about,” for raw experience is now-to-now, and

narrative is a now-to-then process.10

She goes on by stating that “Narrative domesticates experience,”11 thus invalidating each

and every try to work on a subject matter based upon a narrative instead of first-hand experience.

This is due to the impossibility of textually communicating experience she proclaims.12

Less radical and quite probably more useful to scientific conduct that would flood every

site of conflict with eager researchers is Nordstrom's call for respect towards ways of thinking

different from Northern European tradition of academia. These occidental views, as she implies,

“(re)create and perpetuate the very (post)colonial divisions and hierarchies we seek to

dismantle”13 as they “relegate theory, philosophy, and epistemology to academia.” 14 This indeed

is arrogant and Nordstrom is right in her criticism of terms describing different schools of

thought as less valuable due being non-scientific.15 Scientific methodology has its place and

function, but it has no monopoly on creating knowledge, which Nordstrom beautifully

demonstrates by describing science's inability to properly define violence, while people know

violence “always already.”16

10 Ibid. 22.
11 Ibid.
12 cf. ibid.
13 Ibid. 26.
14 Ibid. 27.
15 cf. ibid.
16 Ibid. 115.

Carsten Kaefert: Review: A Different Kind of War Story→Challenging Social Science Page 4/5
Conclusion
Nordstrom delivers a thought-provoking work definitely worth re-reading and poses

questions that will have to be debated for years to come. Especially her critiques of what is

considered as scientific conduct are eye openers. Nevertheless some inconsistencies plague the

book that might drown her findings in criticism – which would be a major loss.

Carsten Kaefert: Review: A Different Kind of War Story→Conclusion Page 5/5