Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Social Science Approaches

Danijela Majstorovic, Vladimir Turjacanin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137346940
• eBook ISBN: 9781137346957
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Psychology

Youth Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an interdisciplinary effort to position and describe the contested nature of state and ethnic identity among youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina by providing empirical, first-hand evidence on identity structure and the subsequent implications for inter-group relations.

Part I

Ethnicity in Theory

1

Troubles with Ethnicity: Theoretical Considerations and Contextual Background

The story of the recent socio-historical context of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) (and the entire region, for that matter) begins with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc, and the segregation of Yugoslavia into its constitutive parts – federal republics. While 1992 is the year when national frontiers in united Europe ceased to exist, paving the way for the free movement of people, goods and capital, and when Europe seemingly transcended nationhood and nationalism (Brubaker, 2009), in that same year B&H became an independent state for the first time in modern history. Shortly afterwards, following the outbreak of conflict in Croatia, one of the bloodiest conflicts in post-World War II Europe permanently marked the country with uncertainty, impoverishment and fear. The war ended in 1995 with the so-called Dayton Peace Agreement, after which B&H became defined as a tri-nation state.¹ The war had dire and long-term consequences for the society of B&H. Before the war it had a population of about 4.4 million. The largest percentage of the population consisted of the members of the three dominant constituent peoples: Bosniaks (called Muslims at the time, about 44%), Serbs (about 31%) and Croats (about 17%). In addition to the dominant peoples, there existed about 6% of Yugoslavs and about 2% who were considered others. Since a census has not been taken since 1991, the current population size can only be estimated. According to the data from the B&H Statistics Agency, B&H has a population of about 3.8 million. It is composed of three territorially and politically distinct units: two entities (the Federation of B&H (FB&H) and the Republika Srpska (RS)) and the Brčko District. The Federation of B&H comprises ten regions (cantons); the Republika Srpska is divided into municipalities, whereas the Brčko District consists solely of the city of Brčko. The ruling bodies are established at the cantonal, entity and state level, and each of these regions further has its own administrative structures, which contributes to a system of authority that is rather complex, expensive and slow.

Unique to B&H is the institution of the Office of the High Representative, with the highest legislative and executive authority in the state, whereby B&H is a type of protectorate (Bieber, 2008). Administrative divisions also reflect ethnic divisions; thus, the majority of the RS population are Serbs (about 81%), while the majority of FB&H are Bosniaks (73%) and Croats (17%).² In terms of its economic development (UNDP Human Development Index) in 2011 B&H ranked 70th in the world, and was among the ten least developed countries in Europe. It is estimated that there are about 500,000 unemployed in B&H, and that the average wage is about 780 KM (398 €). The educational system is also based on ethnic principles. Ministries of Education are established in all cantons and entities. The curricula in the primary and secondary schools are designed around the same core subjects and ethnic-specific groups of subjects (language, history and geography), defined as the subjects of constituent peoples. Due to the specific character of the educational system, specific phenomena occur, such as ‘divided schools’, where children of different ethnicities attend the same schools but are separated from each other in order to take ethnic-specific classes. Such an organization of the entire political and social system, based around the principles of ‘constituent peoples’, creates a special framework, not only in terms of political structures, but also in terms of interpersonal relations, which are inevitably affected by ethnic borders.

Interethnic relations (primarily conflicts) are not restricted to this area only – the late 20th century witnessed a shocking increase in ethnic-based conflicts: Hutu and Tutsi conflict in Rwanda, Chechen and Russian conflict in the Russian Federation, Kurd and Turk conflict in Turkey, Kurd and Iraqi conflict in Iraq, Arab and Jew conflict in the Middle East, Tibetan and Chinese conflict in China, European conflicts in Northern Ireland, Basque separatism in Spain and ‘peaceful tensions’ between the Flemish and the Walloons in Belgium. If we agree that nations and ethnicities are not fixed categories of analysis but, rather, categories of practice structuring our perception, informing our thoughts and experiences and organizing discourses and political actions (Brubaker, 2009: 7), then why is it important to study ethnic identity in B&H today and how should we go about it? This question is actually rhetorical, since the division of political power in B&H today is based exclusively on ethnicity, which, as performative as it may be, continues to mobilize ethno-politics. Due to the fact that it has been inscribed in laws and the constitution, we now have representatives of the ‘constituent peoples’, that is, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, acting as presidents and vicepresidents of the state and entity political bodies. If you do not identify with any of these three categories, then you are Other, and as Other you have no political rights. The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Dervo Sejdić (a Roma) and Jakob Finci (Jewish) versus Bosnia and Herzegovina, which established that there is systemic constitutional discrimination against all persons not belonging to the constituent peoples on account of their inability to stand as candidates for positions in the Presidency of B&H and the B&H House of Peoples, undoubtedly poses a veritable challenge to the theory and practice of constitutional engineering in divided societies (Hodžić and Stojanović, 2011). Again, here, we are not asking whether there is more or less nationalism in post-war B&H today (in fact, it would be absurd to measure such a force, given its heterogeneous and polymorphous nature (Brubaker, 2009: 10)), but with what structure and in what style ethnicity in B&H has come to be such a major organizing principle for discourses, actions, and attitudes in the country? Our main question is: how, exactly, is the state of political and ethnic intertwinement reflected in the behavior, thinking and affective experience of the youth in B&H? On the one hand, our study should lead to a better understanding of the society we live in, while, on the other hand, we contribute to the social sciences by providing a description of the specific context found in B&H, challenging a Western bias when it comes to researching postwar B&H as the object. That is precisely why we wanted to change embarking on this research as two scientists from the region. Knowing it is a challenge worth taking, we hope to pave the way for further investigations of these complex phenomena and learn important lessons for a hopefully better future.

Terminology confusion: ‘Ethnicity, people, nation’ in theory

In the abundance of literature on nations, nationalism and national, that is, ethnic identity, terminological confusions often occur. We have, therefore, in order to avoid any semantic detours, decided to provide theoretical explanations of what these terms signify in contemporary theory. Historically, the nation has meant a citizenship relation, presuming the nation to be a collective sovereignty emanating from common political participation, and a relation of ethnicity, presuming a common language, history and cultural identity (Verdery, 1993: 180), the latter relation being more common in Central and Eastern Europe and usually associated with nationalism (ibid.). Verdery contends that how a polity defines the relationship between its ‘ethnic nation’ and ‘citizenship’ deeply affects its form of democracy (ibid.: 181), but we would like to add that negotiation between the two, in a situation when they are diametrically opposite, and in fact threaten to annihilate one another, is crucial for the future of B&H.

The term ‘ethnicity’ comes from the Greek word ethnos, meaning people. The original use was to demarcate pagan peoples of non-Hellenic origin. Later uses of the term had similar connotations: to denote non-Jews (Gentiles) by Jews, or pagans and barbarians by the British. As Malešević (2004) accurately observes, we can still find some of these derogatory meanings in modern use, even in academic contexts. In current Western academia, ethnicity (or ethnic group) is almost universally a term for ethnic or racial minorities in the majority society of the nation-state. So today you can find Ethnic and Minority Studies, in which people of Africa, Asia and Latin America are widely ‘studied’. Then there are journals such as Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology or Journal of Multicultural, Gender and Minority Studies, which publish articles on the issues of ethnicities/minorities. Very rarely do we find a German, French or English ethnicity. Recent studies of ethnicity in ex-Yugoslavia all imply the bloody ethnic conflicts. Basically, we can observe at least three general uses of the term ethnicity in Western literature: to denote long-existing minorities in the territory of a nation-state, to denote newly arrived immigrant populations, and as a general term for groups/peoples whose behavior is interpreted as irrational, regressive or violent.

Even though the terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic group’ were occasionally used before the wars of 1992–1995 in our³ literature on sociology, psychology and science in general, the main use came during and after the 1990s. Before that, in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the usual term was ‘nations’ and ‘nationalities’ for ethnic groups, nations referring to larger and nationalities referring to smaller groups. The terms nation and nationality also denoted ethnicity; rarely were they signifiers of a national identity. Rot and Havelka (1973), for instance, distinguish between two types of identifications: national and Yugoslavian attachment (which could be interpreted as ethnic and state). On the other hand, one of the first authors to use the term ‘ethnic’ as a synonym for ‘national’ was Ðurić (1980) in his monograph Psychological structure of ethnic attitudes in the youth. Even the term ‘nationalism’, notorious in SFRY since it signified a stamp on a prison admittance form, actually stood for dissemination of ethnically based hatred, that is, the subversion of the foundations of the federal state. The term ‘ethnocentrism’ was first used in Western literature rather early (Sumner, 1906), referring to extreme affiliation to one’s group and a tendency to undermine other ethnic groups. The term entered our literature much later. In a way, it was almost logical to use national instead of ethnic in the context of Yugoslavia: it was a federal republic consisting of republics with somewhat nation-state-like statuses.

Most of social science articles from our region do not make a clear distinction between ethnicity and nation (e.g. Kuzmanović, 1994; Čorkalo, 1998; Milošević-Ðorđević, 2003; Turjačanin, 2005), but there is a general consensus on using the distinction between ethnic/ethnic group and nation in relation to the development of a political state, that is, a more or less finished nation-state in the modernization period. Although the use of the term ‘ethnic’ as a signifier of specific ethnic groups, and ‘national’ as a signifier of a state affiliation, is preferred, we have, at times, an obviously different understanding of the term ethnicity, in particular when it refers to ethnic minorities, and the overlapping of racial and ethnic identities, especially in literature originating from the USA (Phinney, 1996).

It should be noted that one frequently finds discrepancies in terminology in Western literature as well. The term ethnicity, which could be translated as etničnost, refers to a set of traits that a group/community/collective possesses; a nominal signifier of a group itself is the term ethnie, a word of French origin, often used by English-speaking authors (Smith, 1998: 40). Such confusion in terminology stems from the ambiguousness of the very term ethnie, that is, nation or people, and an array of theoretical definitions of the term, as we shall see later in this and other chapters in the book. We will, therefore, in the spirit of the local context, still use the terms ethnicity/nation/people as synonyms, but we will give preference to the term ‘ethnicity’, due to the specific situation in B&H. In contrast, in cases when we want to refer to identification with wider communities such as state or higher-level communities (e.g. Europe), we will stress it appropriately.

Defining ethnicity

Modernists and post-modernists define identity, whether ethnic or gender, as a social construct produced through a discourse based on the subjective imagining of the nation as a community, with the mother tongue serving as the core of the ethnic identity (Anderson, 1983), although many members of the nation will never meet other members of the community; it is also perceived as performative and is exhibited through stylized repetition of acts (Butler, 1990) of that identity. Fishman (1980: 63–68) argues that ethnicity entails ‘being, doing and knowing’. The ‘being’ of an ethnicity is an inner feeling which goes beyond death and promises eternal life, since ‘origin and mutual roots can be proven’ and metaphors of ‘blood, bones and flesh’ clearly demonstrate this. The principle of ‘doing’ means that, if we identify ourselves as Bosniaks, Serbs or Croats, it entails certain practices such as poems, jokes (which are not told before the members of ‘Other’ ethnicities), cheering, rituals, especially religious rituals and many other rites and ceremonies where Serbhood, Croathood or Bosniakhood are performed; otherwise, the tradition is imagined in other ways, and national myths are ‘modified, institutionalized and ritualized’ for other purposes (Hobsbawm and Rangers, 1983). According to Fishman (ibid.: 66), in addition to being and doing, classic Hebrew and Greek theories define ethnicity as a form of ‘knowing’, and go further to claim that philosophy, and even cosmology, originate from ethnicity. This knowledge includes history, myths and legends which transfer intergenerational knowledge, which provides a world view and the language of an ethnic group, which the group then uses to transfer collective memory and history. The word ‘identity’, however, tends to ascribe essential importance to the group, instead of analyzing it. Therefore, a number of contemporary scholars suggest using the term ‘identifications’, which refers to ‘doing’, not the ‘state’, or ‘being’.

The study of the nature of ethnic identity proposes two opposing approaches: ‘primordialism’ and ‘situationism’, and related approaches (Malešević, 2004; Jenkins, 2008a; Westin, 2010), or, as some authors (e.g. Smit, 1998: 26) say, ‘Western’ and ‘Non-Western’ models. Primordialism proposes that ethnic identity is an integral part of a person and cannot be changed; as such, it is somewhat different from all other social identities. According to primordialists, people are related to their ethnic identity by their biological characteristics (common genetic origin, appearance), mother tongue, culture, religion, moral norms, and so on, which they acquire by birth and nature of socialization within a respective ethnic community. This type of relationship is often expressed through emotional aspects, similar to relations within one’s family, and rarely as a matter of interest. The ultimate form of this category of theories are socio-biologist neo-Darwinist theories, which reduce ethnicity to blood ties (Van den Berghe, 1981). According to them, a culture (including ethnicity) is just a form of organization of humans based on the inevitable biological roots of human behavior. However, some authors are not that radical, but acknowledge a basic role of cultural organization. Thus, Geertz (1963) argues that identity is based more on the feeling of natural closeness and cultural similarity, rather than on intergroup interaction. A child is born in a given language–cultural setting, and through the process of socialization she/he inevitably absorbs typical features and behavioral patterns, whereby this kind of identity develops regardless of the existence of other ethnic communities one could interact with. There is a certain circularity in explanations of this approach, since culture defines ethnicity and ethnicity defines culture. Further, these theories fail to explain the changes of ethnic identity through the course of history, or how people from so-called ‘mixed marriages’ form their identities, or how some people take on new ethnic and national identities in the course of their lives. In brief, from the point of view of contemporary science, it is not clear what constitutes the specific and mystical nature of ethnic identities, or how they differ from other kinds of social and class identifications. Today, these theories are regarded as descriptive examples from the past (Putinja and Stref-Fenar, 1997), or as a basis for everyday laymen’s implicit theories of ethnicity, although some are still considered to be embedded in larger biological or cultural theories (Malešević, 2004; Jenkins, 2008a).

An opposing theoretical position is offered by the theorists who describe ethnic identity as consisting of situational, interactive, instrumentalist and constructivist processes. The common starting ground for these theoretical approaches is that ethnicity is not some character trait, nor an inherent feature of an individual within a society; rather, it is a type of social relation which is subject to changes and which occurs as a reflection of social reality. It is not only important how people perceive themselves but also how others perceive them. In B&H today, for instance, one can claim not to feel ethnically affiliated, but most people will have a tendency to determine your ethnic category based on your name, dialect or discourse. Depending on how you are perceived, others will assume a pattern of behavior and your self-perception and identity will not influence the interaction significantly. The pioneer of such an approach was probably Barth (1969), who emphasized the relational nature of ethnic identity, that is, he posed things in a completely opposite way from the primordialists: it is not the internal culture, but the borders between the groups, that are crucial to the formation of ethnic identity. This approach later found support in psychological theories of social categorization (Tajfel, 1970) and social identity (Turner, 1975; Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Hogg, 2006).

The ‘instrumentalist’ approach perceives ethnicity as a reflection of instrumental tendencies, especially of social authorities in a struggle over political and economic power (Cohen, 1969; Glazer and Moynihan, 1975). Although the work of the aforementioned theorists relies primarily on the analysis of the African post-colonial societies, certain similarities with B&H society, in which the highest level of mobilization of identity occurs during the election, can be noted. These theories, contrary to primordialist theories, can easily explain changes in ethnic identity; the only problem might occur in relation to the explanation of how some ethnic identities survive even in situations when the society/state does not favor them. In such cases an additional explanation is provided in terms of emotional function – the ethnic group provides affective support and the sense of belonging (Smit, 1998).

Constructivism also emphasizes the changing nature of ethnic identity and its social construction. In his most popular book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1983) analyses the process of forming a nation-state as an imagined community. It is imagined because most of the members do not know each other, and never will; but the idea of unity, based on a common language and cultural foundations, exists in their imaginary, and can easily be mobilized for the purposes of the political project of the rising elites, with the purpose of forming nation-states.

There is, of course, a wide range of instrumental/constructivist theories which build around particular aspects of ethnic relations, particularly conflicts. Neo-Marxists (Bonacich, 1972; Szymanski, 1976), for instance, focus on the class and economic background of ethnic and racial divisions in capitalist society, where the ruling class mobilizes the ethnic identity as one of the convenient mechanisms for obtaining a cheap workforce. According to these theorists, other identities, such as gender, racial, religious, and so on, can be initiated in a similar manner.

Nationality can be understood both as a principle and as an ideology, whereas in its deconstruction the language represents the basic means for creation of cohesion (Fishman, 1972; Anderson, 1983) among the members of a nation. Myths, as structural and cultural-specific systems, are expressions of an ideology that enable mutual understanding within a cultural community, and as such are in the midst of cognitive processes (Maranda, 1972, 1985). Traditional myths, as a look into the past which reflects the tradition of folk songs, leaders and troubles, are exegesis – deficient and indefinite; however, they often evolve to the level of ideological myths, which aim to provide the tradition, as an incomplete narrative, with an ending (Velikonja, 2003: 7) and then politicize it.

Miller (2004) criticizes Anderson’s definition of a nation as an imagined community (1989), and claims i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Ethnicity in Theory
• Part II: Ethnicity and Identity in Qualitative Focus
• Part III: Social Identity and Interethnic Relations
• Notes
• Reference
• Index