Social Mobilization Beyond Ethnicity

Civic Activism and Grassroots Movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Chiara Milan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351174220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers an in-depth investigation of the emergence and spread of social mobilizations that transcend ethnicity in societies violently divided along ethno-national lines. Using Bosnia Herzegovina as a case study, the book explores episodes of mobilization which have superseded ethno-nationalist cleavages.

Bosnia Herzegovina emerged from the 1992–95 war brutally impoverished and deeply ethnically divided, representing a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in such divided societies. Despite difficult circumstances for civic-based collective action, social mobilizations in the country have grown in size, number and intensity in recent years. Marked by citizen demand for accountable governance, responsive urbanism, and access to basic human rights, these protests have been driven by economic, social and political problems which cut across religious and ethnic divides. Examining the variation in spatial and social scale of contention, the book investigates movements' formation, their organizational structures and networking strategies and advances research on divided societies and social movements.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Southeastern Europe and those examining political dissent, social movements and mobilization in divided societies, as well as practitioners in civil society, grassroots groups and political activists.

1 Researching mobilization beyond ethnicity in divided societies

An introduction

Introduction

On February 5, 2014 violent protests erupted in Tuzla, a city of 120,000 inhabitants in the north-eastern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)¹. That day a rally organized by a group of disenfranchised workers to claim their salaries and pension benefits was met by a violent police crackdown. Following the attack, protests escalated further in the city and quickly spread across the country, making headlines around the globe. After few days of riots and looting, shortly the riots in Tuzla and in other urban centres of the country faded away and left room to open discussion in participatory citizens’ assemblies known as “plena”. Born out of street protests, the plena became spaces where participants had the possibility of elaborating their grievances as they had never done before in the period that followed the 1992–95 conflict.

The 2014 protests in BiH have been the largest outbreak of unrest to hit the country since the end of the war. They attracted people from all walks of life and had social grievances at their core to the extent that some participants and observers dubbed it a “Social Uprising” (socijalni bunt). This book advances the argument that these upheavals, like the others analysed in this volume, are to be considered instances of social mobilization beyond ethnicity for they transcend institutionalized ethno-nationalist boundaries that inform citizens’ everyday life in the country, and downplay ethnicity as main category of identification. In spite of taking place in a society divided along ethno-national lines, they involve individuals and groups that activate an identity dimension different to that based on membership in an ethno-national group, around which individual identities and social relations are organized and reproduced in divided societies. The high degree of participation and the diffusion of the protests to several towns and cities across the country suggest that, under certain conditions, ethnicity can be marginalized and decentred (or even dismissed) as primary category of identification in conflict-ridden and ethnified settlements.

This book explores the conditions that make social mobilization beyond ethnicity possible in a divided society in which “the capacity of individuals to escape from ethnic identities is severely limited” (Nagle 2016, 12). To this end, it analyses three episodes of protests beyond ethnicity occurred in BiH from 2012 to 2014, addressing the factors that accounted for social mobilization to diffuse almost state-wide and amongst diverse social groups. It also explains how collective action makes possible to activate alternative identities that deliberately supersede, and sometimes clash with, the dominant ethno-national categories of identification. Here BiH is taken to represent a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in divided societies, since ethno-national identification in the country is given great weight over other dimensions of identity, and relations amongst different national groups dominate on all political actions, offering more favourable conditions for ethno-national mobilization to occur.

Following the scholarly suggestion to give importance to factors such class and social inequalities when accounting for conflict and contention (Archer, Duda, and Stubbs 2016), this book explores episodes of mobilization that activated alternative, at times “subversive”, identities, which silence and/or decentre ethno-national ones. In episodes of social mobilization beyond ethnicity, the ethno-national category of identification does not entirely disappear, yet it is constantly challenged by contentious actors whose patterns of identification do not necessarily follow ethno-national lines. The study borrows the expression “social mobilization beyond ethnicity” from nationalism studies, where the preposition “beyond” stands to indicate that the claims and goals of the demonstrators transcend ethno-national categorization not as an ideal (and thus in a normative way), but in very concrete terms, pertaining to the realm of day-to-day social interactions. However, mobilization beyond ethnicity does not necessarily entail the denial or loss of individuals’ identification with a certain ethno-national category, but rather calls into question the institutionalization and politicization of ethnicity as primary and collective rather than auxiliary and individual category of identification.

This volume was born from the compelling need to approach and explain contention in ethnified and violently divided settings within the conceptual frameworks of social movement studies rather than through the lenses of ethno-national antagonism. To that end, it makes the effort to overcome the narrative focusing on long-standing conflict between ethno-national communities, a paradigm that has tended to dominate studies of the region so far. The book stems also from the empirical observation that, in spite of unpropitious conditions for grassroots civic activism and contentious collective action, sustained episodes of mobilization focusing on social issues have emerged and thrived only in recent years in BiH. This, for certain, unexpected protests did not occur in a vacuum, yet reflect the socio-political transformations that the country and the Western Balkans region have gone through over the last decade. Informed by a five-year empirical research in the country, this volume reflects also on the usefulness and applicability of concepts derived from social movement literature to explain mobilization in conflict-ridden and divided societies, whose characteristics are outlined in the section below.

Social mobilization in divided societies: a beyond-ethnic perspective

The sources for socio-political conflict in violently divided contexts are manifold. One stands in the segmentation of society according to alleged ethno-national lines, a division likely to generate and reproduce antagonism (Nagle and Clancy 2010). Non-pacified cleavages and a deep conflict over the legitimacy of the state, which is often called into question for “actively taking the side of one of the parts in conflict” rather than acting in favour of all its citizenry (Bosi and De Fazio 2017, 11), constitute another reason for conflict. In divided societies, ethnic categories get institutionalized, entrenched and reproduced in everyday life through political, social, cultural and psychological processes. On a daily basis, the political leadership opposes the alleged ethno-national groups against each other, drawing upon their competing national claims over the question of sovereignty. Treating ethno-national identities as “rooted, bounded and homogeneous” (Hromadžić 2015, 10) with their actions and discourses, the political elite reproduces and reinforces the assumption that these identities are fixed and not changeable, multiple and overlapping. In BiH, for instance, the claimed cultural distinctiveness among the ethno-national peoples living inside the country’s borders is reflected at the institutional level and in several aspects of everyday life, from media outlets to sporting affiliations and trade unions, education system² and public holidays. It does not come as a surprise that, in said context, so-defined ethno-national groups bear “a high degree of resilience against change, especially when they are continually iterated through narrative forms, symbols, rituals, social and political activities” (Nagle and Clancy 2010, 6). Consequently, mixing of individuals having a diverse ethno-national background remains unlikely, while boundary crossing represents an exception rather than the norm (Nagle 2016).

In divided contexts also social and civic life tends to occur within rather than across ethno-national groups. Political parties mobilize almost exclusively along ethno-national lines and secure their legitimacy by claiming to represent what they term “their ethnic constituencies”. In doing so, they advance policies that appeal to distinct ethnic segments of the society instead that to different sections of it. For this reason, this type of political parties have been defined as “catch-us” rather than “catch-all” parties (Mitchell and Evans 2009), which often make use of a “catch within” strategy aimed at maximizing votes inside the same ethno-national group (Nagle 2016). Electoral competition occurs thus predominantly at the intra-ethnic level, as political parties compete for voters within the ethno-national group they claim to represent “with virtually no contest for votes across ethnic cleavages” (Kapidžić 2016, 129). Given that political parties are mainly based on ethno-national interests, electoral choices are driven more by ethno-national allegiances than by the socio-economic pledges. Consequently, claims Mujkić, “you would not vote for lower taxes, for ecological laws, etc. You vote for your own survival” (2008, 22). All these conditions provide the basis for further violent division in a context where, in most cases, prior group violence has already enforced group identity, making other forms of political identification more difficult (Bieber 2018). Often the legacy of war and violence had yet hampered social trust and cohesion amongst citizens in the past.

It follows that, in divided societies, ethnicity and ethnic identity retain a high mobilizing potential, acting as “central organizing principles for contentious politics” (Bosi and De Fazio 2017, 25). The importance attributed to ethno-national identity reduces to the minimum the space for “alternative modes of politics that cross-cut ethnic cleavages” (Nagle 2017, 185), limiting also the possibility for other sources of social identification – such as class, gender or socio-economic status – to garner importance (Koneska 2014). The space for civic mobilization is therefore severely limited (Murtagh 2016), since groups that do not identify as ethno-national – for instance sexual minorities, migrants, women, and the like – find little or no space for action (Nagle 2016). Following from the fact that identification is considered “the most important component in the formation of a political cleavage” (della Porta 2015, 74), the most likely form of collective action expected in a divided context is therefore ethno-national mobilization, namely “the process by which groups organize around some features of ethnic identity (for example language, skin colour, customs) in pursuit of collective ends” (Nagel and Olzak 1982, 1). By contrast, mobilization beyond ethnicity appears unlikely as “competing ethnic or national identities can be activated and made salient in a short period of time” (Bosi and De Fazio 2017, 17). Against this background, this book advances the argument that, under certain conditions, mobilization beyond ethnicity is possible even in societies divided along ethno-national lines, when individuals activate identity categories different from the ethno-national ones through collective action, as it was the case in BiH.

The relevance of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a case study

Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a critical and strategic case for the examination and understanding of the dynamics of mobilization in divided societies. It presents also a counter-intuitive case, in so far as contentious collective action took place in spite of the country presenting a wide range of unfavourable conditions for its occurrence. Historically, the country bears a weak tradition of civic activism, as ordinary citizens have seldom stepped out in great masses to oppose the establishment. As a post-socialist country, BiH is expected to have a weak or quiescent civil society (Howard 2003). The transition of the country from the socialist system underwent through a war rather than through citizen-led resistance as it was the case in other socialist states, with an important role played by foreign actors. As Fagan and Sircar maintain, “the post-conflict state came into being through an agreement amongst opposing combatants, which was brokered (and designed) internationally, and guaranteed by kin states that had exacerbated the violence” (2015, 160). The general attitude of people towards demonstrations on the public space nowadays is frequently of fear and distrust, and the country is still considered as a high-risk environment for contentious action. The fear that massive gatherings will turn violent, legacy of the 1992–95 conflict, continues to disincline the population to adopt protests and street actions as tools of contention. Even today the authorities and the media manipulate fears of safety and the threat of internal enemies to prevent, or discredit, attempts of mobilization (Mujkić 2008). The active expression of opposition through confrontational means like mass protests and occupation of public space is a phenomenon emerged mostly in the recent years.

The socio-political configuration of the country severely constrains further bottom-up mobilization, as it allocates a large share of power to so-called ethno-national groups to the detriment of the state. Numerous functions of the state are paralysed as a consequence of the provisions enshrined in the peace agreements that ended the war in 1995. The Dayton peace accords enforced a constitutional settlement that fragmented citizenship along the lines of ethno-national kinship (Džankic 2015), institutionalizing and crystallizing ethno-national categories in the forms of “constituent peoples”. According to the state’s Constitution, proportional political representation is granted through a mechanism of ethnic quotas allocated to the three nations living inside the country’s borders, the so-called “constituent peoples”: Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims)³. The institutional setting envisages these quotas to determine the allocation of key posts, whereas state institutions, education and the security sector are segmented along ethno-national lines. The key factors behind the separation between the three peoples are considered ethnicity, religion, culture, history and, to a certain extent, language (Keil 2013). Religious ascription and national identity strongly overlap in the three groups, which share a distinctive religious heritage, not necessarily translated into religious practice (Hunt, Duraković, and Radeljković 2013). Bosnian Croats hold a Catholic heritage, Bosnian Serbs call upon their Serbian Orthodox background, while Bosniaks claim Islamic faith and Muslim culture “as their most formative influences” (Donia 2006, 2). According to the data of the last population census conducted in 2013, Bosniaks comprise 50 percent of the citizens, Serbs roughly 30 percent, and Croats around 15 percent of the total population in the country, while around 3 percent of individuals declare to belong to the category of the “others”⁴. By resting on the principle of balance and equality amongst the three constituent peoples, the institutional and political framework of BiH favours a type of citizenship that treats ethno-national groups as unitary collective actors with common purposes (Brubaker 2004). Against this background, political elites repeatedly resort to the “ideology of cultural fundamentalism” (ibid.) to stress the salience of distinctive cultural identities presenting them as irreconcilable, and often mobilize on the fear of the “ethnic other”.

This institutional set-up favours further segregation, making it difficult to uphold values of cooperation and a civic concept of citizenship. It follows that social mobilization around issues that “attempt to stimulate new political identities that contest existing forms of ethnic mobilisation” (McGarry and Jasper 2015, 13) emerges with difficulty. Furthermore, clientelistic networks control the already ethno-territorially fragmented polities (Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Ker-Lindsay, and Kostovicova 2013) as well as the allocation of jobs. A context like the Bosnian and Herzegovinian one matches Howard’s definition of “ethnocracy” (Howard 2012, 155) as ethnic divisions dominate political and institutional life and ethno-national identity converted into the dominant source of identification. Take...