Books - Greta Uehling

Everyday War

The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine

What goes through the mind of a parent who sends their child to school across a minefield or a person who must choose between caring for their elders and fleeing for safety?

Greta Uehling delves into these and many other experiences that have characterized life in Ukraine for over eight years.

Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine explores the experience of noncombatant civilians in a country at war.

Based on research in Ukraine, the book shows how civilians engaged with war in remarkably creative and strategic ways.

Activities like sending medical supplies or holding bake sales, while everyday, are far from mundane.

Uehling shows civilians’ capacity to deliver comfort and care in spite of the military conflict.

In the literature on war and conflict, personal relationships are usually treated as tangents or backdrops to the “real” action. In contrast, this book delves into relationships to show how they mattered.

Bridging the fields of anthropology, political geography, international relations, and peace and conflict studies, the book fills a gap in studies of war and conflict by carefully considering the human connections that people said concerned them the most.

"Greta Uehling sensitively, and with nuance, highlights the often-misunderstood early stages of the war in Ukraine and the toll it has taken on its people. In her exploration of the Ukrainian conflict and thoughtful consideration of contextually complex language and culture, she brings many universal struggles to light."

"The eloquent title Everyday War, stuns us with the 'banality of evil' in the spirit of Hannah Arendt and, at the same time, helps us to look into the inner world of people for whom the presence of war, however paradoxically, has become commonplace."

The Crimean Tatars’ Deportation and Return

In the early morning hours of May 18, 1944 the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported from their historical homeland according to orders from Stalin. Having been given only fifteen minutes to gather their belongings, they were herded onto cattle cars bound for Soviet Central Asia, and many perished from the journey, dehydration, and disease. Although the official Soviet record was cleansed of these events, the Crimean Tatars did not forget their homeland. Beyond Memory explores how the Crimean Tatars collectively remembered their past, and the role this played in returning to the Crimean peninsula.