Justice and reconciliation often are touted as necessary steps for the rebuilding of a post-war society. But what do these abstract terms mean to individual survivors who find different ways of thinking about or remembering their experience? These reflections occur within and between people. Can survivors of ethnic conflict find common ground and work together to reunite their divided communities? And are there strategies that can help this process along?

The authors in Part 3 explore the long-term effects of war and how they become manifest in individuals and social groups. In Chapter 13, Pamela Blotner traces the work of several western artists who have used art to confront their own personal experiences of war. Based on interviews with Bosnian and Croat artists, she finds that many Balkan artists have focused their work on the importance of place, whether it be home, community, or nationhood. The age of the artists when they lived through the violence, Blotner suggests, determines whether these artists chose to reclaim or avoid place in their work.

In Chapter 14, Dean Ajdukovic and Dinka Corkalo, in an intensive study of survivors on both sides of the 1991 war in Vukovar, describe how the betrayal of neighbors has affected the process of reconciliation. Whether this is an accurate perception or not, any movement toward social reconstruction is sabotaged by the loss of trust that develops when neighbors are seen as betraying their friends.