When “the facts” become a text: reinterpreting war with Serbian war veterans

Abstract

Rationalist theories of political violence proclaim rather than show what motivates war participation. This article tries to examine the limits of reconstructions of these motivations by analyzing interview material gathered from Serbian war veterans. Using “grounded theory” as a methodology, this research has revealed that the identification of motivations has to take into account social and historical contexts that play out as life-worlds and world-views. Real decision points are, however, hard to identify. Therefore, the article suggests a stronger focus on “carriers” (Trägerschichten) for the study of conflict dynamics.