Gender and Nationalism in Bosnia

Abstract

Elissa Helms. (2013). Innocence and Victimhood: Gender, Nation and Women's Activism in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 325 pp., $26.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-299-29554-7). The war in Bosnia produced many horrifying images, none more powerful than Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) women as victims of systematic wartime rape. These images in turn had profound effects on international interventions meant to rebuild that society. As Elissa Helms points out, however, this was an image of Bosnia without the voices of women themselves. Her book is a corrective, “offer[ing] an alternative to images of the passive, Muslim female victim, focusing on women’s active roles” (27). And indeed, this book is a wonderful corrective, one that gives an in-depth look at the complexities of Bosnian society through the lens of women activists. Based on fifteen years of ethnographic field work spent mostly with women's NGOs—ranging from antinationalist feminists to religious and nationalist groups—the book shows the ways in which gender is deployed by nationalism and nationalists, as well as by outside donors and the entire range of women activists. The result highlights the unintended consequences not only of the use of gender, but also of outside donor efforts to improve gender and national relations in … vgagnon{at}ithaca.edu