In the fifth episode of a series diving deeper into Brown Political Review Magazine articles, Multimedia Director Mitsuki Jiang interviews BPR Staff Writer Adora Limani (’28) about her recent article, “Echoes of the Past.” Her article is featured in the Change edition of the BPR Magazine and can also be found on the BPR website.
Mitsuki Jiang: Hi! I’m Mitsuki with the Brown Political Review’s Multimedia Board. Welcome to the fifth episode of Beyond the Article, which is a series where we interview writers on their inspiration for and content of their [BPR] magazine articles. I’m here today with Adora Limani. Hi.
Adora Limani: Hi!
Mitsuki: Adora is a first year student planning on concentrating in Political Science and IAPA and is a staff writer for BPR. Adora recently wrote an article on how celebratory gunfire signals the systemic legitimization of violence in the Balkans, and it’s titled Echoes of the Past. It’s featured in the CHANGE edition of the Brown Political Review Magazine. So one of your pull quotes is: “Celebratory gunfire is a remnant of the Balkans’ unstable past and serves as a reminder that conflict still shapes the reality of the region. For many people, a large scale and longstanding legitimization of violence has had a detrimental impact on all aspects of everyday life.” Could you maybe give a brief summary of your article and your argument, maybe for anyone who hasn’t gotten a chance to read it yet?
Adora: Yeah, of course, and thank you so much for having me here to talk about this pressing issue. My article is basically looking at and exploring the phenomena of celebratory shootings in the Balkan region. And what I’m looking at specifically is: Why is this such a normalized practice in the Balkans, and what is it telling us and showing us about how conflict still has a very big impact on everyday practices in everyday life, including, you know, weddings, birthdays, New Year celebrations. Why is it that we normalize this practice of gunfire during celebrations that are supposed to be about love and care and mutual cooperation?
Mitsuki: So detracting from the article a little bit, could you maybe give some detail about your writing process and how you write an article?
Adora: What I was really looking at, first of all, is I think my own personal experiences. Coming from North Macedonia, I have witnessed celebratory gunfire and celebratory shootings. And so the first part of the writing process was really actually thinking about what I have witnessed and my own experiences with the practice and kind of analyzing it a little bit. Why is this a thing? Why is it happening? Why is it so normalized? Why is it normalized in my community specifically? And once I thought about that, then I kickstarted the actual research process. I was looking at what articles already exist out there about celebratory shootings, was there any research that was done? Any statistics? I ended up finding a really good report by this organization called SEESAC (The South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons). They had written a really, really expansive report about where celebratory shootings happened the most, why they happen, kind of giving me numbers and data that really helped me put this phenomena into perspective and materialize it.
Mitsuki: As a new staff writer, you’re almost done with your first semester in BPR. What has been your biggest takeaway from writing for a political review like BPR?
Adora: That’s a really good question. I think one of my biggest takeaways is just about argumentation in general and making sure that what you are arguing, number one, is very rooted in facts and things like that, but also the analysis aspect. I think in BPR, we really focus on the hows and the whys instead of just what is happening. And trying to dig deeper than just the surface level has been [a] really, really great process for me as a writer. And I think it’s really helped me in general with my argumentative skills.
Mitsuki: Yeah, I think a lot of times, most BPR articles emphasize the argumentation part instead of just summarizing the facts, [which] does tend to more of a unique perspective, and I think that’s what makes it really interesting.
So I know that you had a word limit for this particular article, especially because it is in the [magazine]. I would love to dive a little bit deeper into the issue. Could you maybe first elaborate on how celebratory gunfire is perceived across different generations in the Balkans? Do you kind of see this as a generational issue? For example, do younger generations see this practice differently compared to older ones, or do you not really see that as a divide?
Adora: I would say that older generations definitely normalize it more. But even as someone from a younger generation, if you’re going to a wedding or if you’re going to a birthday party or any celebration and you witness this practice, it’s still going to be normalized for you as well, right? So I think it’s intergenerational in the sense that the generations are impacting each other because this is a phenomena that happens during these very community-based celebrations. And everyone is a part of these celebrations, you know, children, parents, grandparents. And I think in that sense, it is really impacting also the generations that are coming because it’s kind of just like a cycle. They witnessed this phenomena, they think that it’s normal and that this is the way that we should express celebration and joy. I’ve heard a lot of people say, in my community in specific, “This practice, it’s simply just an emotional thing.” You just feel this joy, this sense of emotion, and somehow you just want to shoot a gun. And obviously, this is not really grounded in anything logical or rational, right? And that’s kind of what I try to get at in my article, that the reason why it’s so prevalent is because of this post-conflict context that it’s in–the normalization of guns, the proliferation of guns after conflict, and all these factors kind of just normalized (also dominance, force, hierarchy). These are all very big factors in why these practices are normalized, but the way that people rationalize it to themselves is that it’s just an emotional thing.
Mitsuki: I see. I think another big topic that you touched on in your article was the link between the perception of masculinity and celebratory gunfire, so I’d love to explore those links further. Do you think that changing gender norms (like social change) would affect the prevalence of the tradition, or do you think the relationship goes in the reverse? Or how do you see the relationship between those two ideas changing over time?
Adora: This is a really good question. And actually one of the things that I was thinking about while writing my article was a book by bell hooks called All About Love, and also another book called The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. What these two books really touch on and talk about is how systems of domination, hierarchy, and violence often lead to other inequalities, how societies that are usually very patriarchal have issues with, you know, systemic racism, homophobia, all these very insidious inequalities usually also suffer from systemic violence, systems of domination, force. So I think these two things are very interconnected. One of the ways that we can alleviate inequalities like gender inequalities is really centering care and love and cooperation instead of domination and violence. And so I think in the Balkans, it’s very similar. The fact that these societies normalized domination and force and hierarchy and, as I say in the article, often positively reinforce them, right? To be a good man and to be a masculine man in this post-conflict context is to be a violent man, really, [or] to be a dominating man. And this idea just, again, reinforces other systems of inequalities and systems of hierarchy that serve to marginalize and subordinate people. So I think there is definitely a causal link there.
Mitsuki: On the note of intervention, I know you mentioned in your article that government intervention, intervention from international organizations, has largely failed to remedy the prevalence of this issue. Given that these government campaigns have had such limited success, do you think that maybe community led initiatives might be more effective when it comes to reducing celebratory gunfire? And if so, what do you think those initiatives would look like?
Adora: One of the things I say in my article is that the reason that these initiatives have been so unsuccessful is because they don’t focus on the actual issue underlying celebratory shootings. They focus on the fact that it can sometimes lead to casualties. And while this is a problem for sure, it’s not the actual underlying systemic and structural issue that celebratory gunfire communicates, which is, again, the legitimization of violence. So I think in order for initiatives to be successful, they have to refocus on this aspect of the structural issues underlying the practice instead of just focusing on its aftermath. Yes, it can lead to casualties and yes, this is bad. But what is the actual problem here? What’s the underlying issue of this practice? It’s violence. It’s the systemic normalization and legitimization of violence. In order to tackle that issue, you have to tackle all the other issues in society that are causing it, so issues in education and gender equality, issues of domestic violence and femicide and other forms of violence that only reinforce the practice of celebratory shootings. The way that I think of it is: If you’re suffering from an illness, for instance, if you don’t treat [this illness] correctly and if you’re not fully healed from it, it’s going to cause other germs to spread and other underlying conditions in your body, right? It’s the same thing with conflict in this case. These societies have failed to heal and treat the impacts of conflict, and so violence and the legitimization of violence is kind of like this underlying condition that coming out of the fact that these societies are not fully healed in all sectors (in education, in political equality, and just all these these different sectors that have been impacted by conflict). And I talk a little bit about how in Bosnia, people that suffered from the war, were not able to even fully receive a good education, and how this is still impacting people intergenerationally. Those little things kind of all connect with each other and are important if we are to treat the issue from its root cause instead of only focusing on its aftermath.
Mitsuki: I love the analogy, and I really loved reading your article. It was so interesting. Honestly, I never really knew about this issue or heard about it, so it was so new to me and very interesting. Is there anything else that you wanted to include that you maybe couldn’t in your article because of the word limit?
Adora: Yeah, I think one thing that I would have wanted to focus on a little bit is this link between joy and violence. Why is it that we want to express specifically joy and celebration in this very violent way? I think this is really connected to, like I was talking about earlier, the fact that these societies center domination and hierarchy instead of care. Then, in situations and environments that are supposed to be about mutual cooperation, mutual trust, community, they become polluted by violence and by domination and force. I think if I had more words, I would have definitely wanted to dive deeper into that aspect, but I think that’s kind of also a very theoretical issue. So, I wanted to focus on the real ways that it impacts people’s lives in this article specifically.
Mitsuki: I would read the article, I think everyone should read this article, and that was all the questions I had. If you made it to the end of this episode, don’t forget to check out Adora’s article and the CHANGE issue of the magazine. It’s, again, as I said, an amazing read. It’s a very engaging, incredibly interesting, and it’s titled Echoes of the Past. It’ll also be on the BPR website. Please consider following BPR podcasts wherever you get them, and please subscribe to the magazine for more amazing articles like Adora’s. Thank you Adora for your time and thank you to everyone for tuning in!
Adora: Of course, thank you so much again!