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Czech Military Veterans and their Reflections of Mission in Afghanistan.
Stehlík, Pavel ; Hlaváček, Jiří (advisor) ; Wohlmuth, Petr (referee)
The goal of this work is to record and reflect private memories of modern Czech war veterans from the Afghanistan mission as well as to write an integrated text about a topic which has not been interpreted yet. The core of the matter is focused on situations which happened in Afghanistan, what the narrators experienced, faced or felt and what they cope with. I am dealing with these topics: preparation for mission, choice of people, leave-taking, the first moments in mission, war essence, enemy image, interpersonal relations, intimate life, financial estimation, mascots and comeback. I tried to catch their unusually common lives of army professionals and their operations in an abroad mission (lapped from leaving till returning life phase). The primary source of the diploma work is based on interviews lead by a method of oral history with modern Czech war veterans from mission in Afghanistan. The text also props upon available memoir literature of fact, study, researches, magazines, diary, Internet articles and filmography. During the reflection of mission memories of Afghanistan, the observed plane is as historical - political as military. The main benefit of this work is setting the imaginary bases for the further similarly oriented researches in the area of new age military historiography and...
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Therapeutic Heroism: Enacting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among War Veterans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Klepal, Jaroslav ; Abu Ghosh, Yasar (advisor) ; Muhič Dizdarevič, Selma (referee) ; Hrešanová, Ema (referee)
Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina I trace ontologies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their enactments among veterans of the 1992-1995 war. My aim is to problematize and rethink social constructionists' approaches in medical anthropology that discuss war trauma and PTSD in relation to naturalistic models and treat them as constructed realities not determined by the nature of things. I argue that such a standpoint produces a particular epistemological/ontological side-effect: it allows medical anthropologists to craft a purely social ontology of trauma and PTSD by claiming that the realness of these "constructs" is a result of psychiatric discourse, moral economy of contemporary societies or Western (intellectual, political, and medical) hegemony. Considering the ontology of PTSD as an empirical question I analyze the enactments of PTSD in four settings: the ethnographic genre itself, the organization of war veterans with PTSD in the city of Tuzla, the veterans' welfare system in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bosnian public arena. I argue that PTSD is practiced as a heterogeneous and multiple reality that cannot be situated solely either in the realm of human organism (and explained by naturalistic models) or society and culture (and...
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Therapeutic Heroism: Enacting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among War Veterans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Klepal, Jaroslav ; Abu Ghosh, Yasar (advisor) ; Muhič Dizdarevič, Selma (referee) ; Hrešanová, Ema (referee)
Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina I trace ontologies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their enactments among veterans of the 1992-1995 war. My aim is to problematize and rethink social constructionists' approaches in medical anthropology that discuss war trauma and PTSD in relation to naturalistic models and treat them as constructed realities not determined by the nature of things. I argue that such a standpoint produces a particular epistemological/ontological side-effect: it allows medical anthropologists to craft a purely social ontology of trauma and PTSD by claiming that the realness of these "constructs" is a result of psychiatric discourse, moral economy of contemporary societies or Western (intellectual, political, and medical) hegemony. Considering the ontology of PTSD as an empirical question I analyze the enactments of PTSD in four settings: the ethnographic genre itself, the organization of war veterans with PTSD in the city of Tuzla, the veterans' welfare system in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bosnian public arena. I argue that PTSD is practiced as a heterogeneous and multiple reality that cannot be situated solely either in the realm of human organism (and explained by naturalistic models) or society and culture (and...
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Walter Reed Scandal and Veterans' Healthcare in the U.S.
Balková, Tereza ; Sehnálková, Jana (advisor) ; Calda, Miloš (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the veterans' healthcare system in the United states and its development between the years 2007 and 2014. In 2007, the prestigious American newspaper The Washington Post reported in a series of articles on critical conditions in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. This scandal simultaneously revealed deep-rooted problems in the U.S. veteran' heathcare system in its entirety. Strong medialization of the events in Walter Reed naturally provoked an intense reaction from both public and the politicians. In the following years, the administrations of both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama took several legislative steps in order to improve the veteran's healthcare system and deal with its main problems. In 2014, the question was raised again with another scandal concerning veteran's care breaking out. This affair brought the legitimacy of all previously made changes and reforms into question as well as casted doubt over the efficiency of the healthcare system as a whole. This thesis follows the essential events and individual legislative steps taken in the given time period, analyzes their importance and meaning, brings them into a broader context and juxtaposes them with the general functionality of the healthcare system and its...
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Czech Military Veterans and their Reflections of Mission in Afghanistan.
Stehlík, Pavel ; Hlaváček, Jiří (advisor) ; Wohlmuth, Petr (referee)
The goal of this work is to record and reflect private memories of modern Czech war veterans from the Afghanistan mission as well as to write an integrated text about a topic which has not been interpreted yet. The core of the matter is focused on situations which happened in Afghanistan, what the narrators experienced, faced or felt and what they cope with. I am dealing with these topics: preparation for mission, choice of people, leave-taking, the first moments in mission, war essence, enemy image, interpersonal relations, intimate life, financial estimation, mascots and comeback. I tried to catch their unusually common lives of army professionals and their operations in an abroad mission (lapped from leaving till returning life phase). The primary source of the diploma work is based on interviews lead by a method of oral history with modern Czech war veterans from mission in Afghanistan. The text also props upon available memoir literature of fact, study, researches, magazines, diary, Internet articles and filmography. During the reflection of mission memories of Afghanistan, the observed plane is as historical - political as military. The main benefit of this work is setting the imaginary bases for the further similarly oriented researches in the area of new age military historiography and...
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