Post-conflict Bosnia Research Articles

Cultural Memory and Trauma: Commemorating the Past in Post-Conflict Bosnia Herzegovina

Post-conflict societies grapple with the complex interplay of cultural memory and trauma. Bosnia and Herzegovina, marked by the devastating 1992-1995 war, provides a poignant case study. This research delves into how collective memory shapes commemoration practices and influences the ongoing process of healing and reconciliation. A mixed-methods approach was employed, incorporating qualitative data collection and analysis. In-depth interviews were conducted with survivors, community leaders, and cultural practitioners. Additionally, content analysis was performed on commemorative events, memorials, and public discourses. Findings highlight the dynamic nature of cultural memory. Commemoration practices serve as sites of contestation, reflecting diverse narratives and interpretations of the past. Trauma manifests in both individual and collective experiences, shaping identity and influencing social relations. In conclusion, the study underscores the crucial role of cultural memory in post-conflict societies. Commemoration serves as a vehicle for acknowledging suffering, promoting healing, and fostering reconciliation. However, it is essential to navigate the complexities of diverse narratives and ensure inclusive representation.

Ethnic Conflict Resolution in Post-Conflict Societies in Bosnia

Purpose: The aim of the study was to analyze ethnic conflict resolution in post-conflict societies in Bosnia. Methodology: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: Studies on ethnic conflict resolution in post-conflict Bosnia emphasize intergroup dialogue, economic development, and transitional justice. Contact initiatives foster trust, while economic empowerment reduces tensions. Truth and reconciliation processes acknowledge past wrongs, and diaspora involvement aids peacebuilding. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Identity theory, contact theory & structural violence theory may be used to anchor future studies on ethnic conflict resolution in post-conflict societies in Bosnia. Practitioners should prioritize initiatives that promote interethnic dialogue, reconciliation, and community engagement at the grassroots level. Policymakers must prioritize inclusive governance structures that ensure the meaningful participation of all ethnic groups in decision-making processes.

The long-term effects of war exposure on generalized trust and risk attitudes: evidence from post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT This article examines the long-term effects of war exposure on generalized trust and risk attitudes 20 years after the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our study goes beyond the destruction of physical and human capital and investigates the effects of war exposure on psychological preferences and beliefs, as well as their mutual relationship and determinants. Our empirical strategy employs a nationally representative survey and an endogenous Seemingly Unrelated Model. We discover that individuals living in municipalities with greater war fatalities report significantly higher distrust in people and simultaneously express greater risk aversion. Moreover, there is a mutually endogenous and strong positive relationship between the two dependent variables, whereby greater trust is associated with greater risk-seeking. Consequently, our results demonstrate that the tragic consequences of war are not only confined to negative socio-economic outcomes but also leave a lasting impact on the psychological preferences of people that experienced it.

Social innovation in a post-conflict setting: examining external factors affecting social service NGOs

ABSTRACT While the study of the influence of external environmental factors on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is well explored in the international development literature, the importance of these factors on NGOs’ transformative roles in a post-conflict development setting remains less understood. Nevertheless, external environmental factors could have a crucial impact on NGOs in such a context, especially when NGOs want to integrate a socially innovative approach into the social services they provide. Using survey data of staff members of social service NGOs from post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (N = 120) and applying resource dependence theory, this study identifies three environmental factors of great importance for NGOs when integrating a socially innovative approach: secured financing, the willingness of service users to participate in innovative services, and the sustainability of the implemented services. By contrast, policy and regulatory frameworks and public institutions’ openness are of moderate importance. Licensing and accreditation, service quality standards, and tax breaks are of even less importance. The results contribute to the understanding of the importance of external factors in the development of social innovations by the NGO sector from the perspective of the post-conflict context.

Ruptured Identities: Affective Needs in PostAccord Education for Bosnia–Herzegovina

This study, while centered within the scholarship of education reform in postconflict Bosnia–Herzegovina (BiH), shifts the locus of focus from large‐scale debates between international organizations and national political bodies toward a consideration of the individuals within the system on the ground. Through the voices of primary school teachers, directors, and pedagogues across eight cities in BiH, this analysis casts light on the struggles facing children and educators in postconflict BiH today, and administrators and reformers within the education frame these struggles. The article concludes that the shifting and ruptured identities of a postwar generation, combined with the economic and social‐emotional struggles facing these populations, point toward affective challenges encountered on a daily basis as both educators and children make their lives in the day‐to‐day reality of today’s BiH. This framework suggests that dichotomies such as monoethnic/multiethnic and segregated/integrated may be eclipsing more nuanced issues within the practice of education and education reform in BiH. The conversations presented in these pages officer a renewed perspective, critical for scholars of peace studies, as we consider the role of education systems in postaccord societies and the effects they can be expected to bring about.

Between Trauma and Resilience

This article discusses the personal narratives (both published and personal interviews collected for the purpose of this study) of female survivors of wartime rape in post–World War II Germany and postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors examine how the women succeed in finding their words both for and beyond the rupture caused by the rapes through examples of life writing that challenge the dominant masculinist historical narrative of war created for ideological reasons and for the benefit of the nation-state. Using theories of trauma and insights by feminist scholars and historians, the authors argue that a transnational reading of survivors’ accounts from these very different geopolitical and historical contexts not only shows multiple points of mutual influence, but also how these narratives can make a significant contribution, both locally and globally, when it comes to revisiting how wartime rape is memorialized, and how lessons learned from the two contexts can be relevant and applicable in other situations of armed conflict as well.

Drawing on the continuum: a war and post-war political economy of gender-based violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT Current understandings of why and how gender-based violence continues beyond the end of conflict remain siloed along theoretical and disciplinary lines. Recent scholarship has addressed the neglected structural dimension when examining the incidence and variation of post-conflict gender-based violence. In particular, continuum of violence and feminist political economy perspectives have offered accounts of gender-based violence during and after conflict. However, these approaches overlook how war and post-war economic processes interact over time and co-constitute the material basis for the continuation of gender-based violence. The war and post-war political economy perspective that we leverage examines critically the distinction, both in theory and practice, between global and local dynamics, and between formal and informal actors in post-conflict societies. Exposing these neglected structural and historical interconnections with evidence from post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, we demonstrate that the material basis of gender-based violence is a cumulative result of political and socio-economic dynamics along the war-to-peace trajectory. Our findings point to the need to be attentive to the enduring material consequences of interests and incentives formed through war, and to the impact of post-war global governance ideologies that transform local conditions conducive to gender-based violence.

Anxious Journeys: Twenty-First-Century Travel Writing in German ed. by Karin Baumgartner and Monica Shafi

Reviewed by: Anxious Journeys: Twenty-First-Century Travel Writing in German ed. by Karin Baumgartner and Monica Shafi Didem Uca Anxious Journeys: Twenty-First-Century Travel Writing in German. Edited by Karin Baumgartner and Monica Shafi. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019. Pp. viii + 276. Cloth $90.00. ISBN 978-1640140110. In our dizzyingly globalizing world, border crossings and their attendant transnational, multilingual, and cross-cultural encounters are as quotidian as they are central. Recent scholarship on experiences of travel, migration, and exile within [End Page 445] the German-speaking context has developed new theoretical approaches to advance this field in increasingly intersectional and interdisciplinary directions. The fourteen chapters in this volume analyze a cross-section of contemporary travelogues from around German-speaking Europe. It joins other volumes, including Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790–1930: Modernity, Regionality, Mobility, edited by Alison E. Martin, Lut Missinne, and Beatrix van Dam (2017), and Passagen des Exils/Passages of Exile, edited by Burcu Dogramaci and Elisabeth Otto (2018), that consider how the physical, intellectual, and psychological experience of leaving one's home and venturing into the great unknown can be aesthetically rendered and what these representations say about the relationship between self and society. Baumgartner and Shafi wisely opt for a broad generic definition of travel writing that includes both fiction and nonfiction produced in a variety of media, though the majority of contributions examine autobiographical novels and short story collections based on their authors' own experiences. Despite its breadth, the volume feels cohesive due to the contributors' shared commitment to a number of issues. These center on the tension between yearning for authenticity, edification, and fulfillment, long held to be essential justifications for travel, and the emergence of their postmodern counterparts—commercialization, fear, and ennui—in a genre where subjectivity and representation are insidiously defined by political, historic, social, and economic factors. Whereas many earlier, canonical works by (white, predominantly male) authors portray the violent intrusion into foreign spaces in order to attain self-discovery through enacting colonial desire, in the contemporary variant, travel and its representation instead routinely lead, as Nicole Grewling argues, to the "disintegration of the subject" (181). The editors note in their introduction that contemporary practitioners of the genre "address the tension between their privileged mobility in the neoliberal world order and the tainted and belated nature of travel," thus "explor[ing] present and past locations with their entangled histories, thereby giving readers the opportunity to reflect on their own place and that of others in the world" (3, 8). As several of the contributors assert, however, these shifts in ideology and positionality do not mean that the texts are unproblematic in their own right, or that their authors can adequately unpack their own complicity in the conditions of inequity that have allowed them to be travelers while others may be variously forced from their homes due to war or catastrophe, or immobile due to lack of disposable income or the "right" passport. To name two examples, Shafi identifies Christoph Ransmayr's "narrative strategies of camouflage and self-effacement" as an attempt to avoid examining his privilege (70), while Nicole Coleman critiques Juli Zeh's method of humanizing through universalization in postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina because "human rights [thus become] the rights of those perceived to be the same yet by chance living elsewhere, rather than the rights of all human beings despite their differences" (85). [End Page 446] Although many volumes focus on Germany with a token FL-A-CH perspective, a significant number of chapters here consider works by Austrians; a few Swiss authors are also featured, while Christina Gerhardt's essay on Judith Schalansky offers a take on the oft-excluded German Democratic Republic. In each case, the particularities of these contexts are outlined for the nonexpert. The subsection on visual and sonic media includes Christina Kraenzle's analysis of the hybrid travel comic genre and Sunka Simon's analysis of Ulrich Seidl's 2012 film Paradies: Liebe. Both essays consider the ethics of representation amid the power differential between the white German and Austrian cultural producers and the nonwhite and postcolonial objects of their white protagonists' gazes. The volume's expansive definition of...

Financial (Il) Literacy And Stability Of The Financial System

The aim of the author of this paper is to show the relationship between the levels of financial
 Literacy of individuals and company’s managers and the stability of financial markets, asset
 Markets and the stability of the financial system as a whole. In post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) economy was ''struck'' by foreign banks and financial capital that has swept the local public ''hungry'' for loans but also under-educated in the financial sense to borrow and use borrowed funds more effectively and accept tolerable burden of debt. Financial illiteracy and the willingness to accept the conditions imposed by banks have led to difficulties in servicing obligations and deteriorating loan portfolio of banks. In such circumstances, the onset of the financial crisis has brought something positive. The trend of rapid borrowing of citizens and companies in BiH was abruptly cut, but on the other hand problems with servicing the loan already taken simultaneously arose. The problems are still not dramatic but it should be noted that problems in the banking sector come to the surface only after one and a half to two years after the crisis. The author believes that a more serious approach to the financial literacy of citizens and managers and owners of small businesses is crucial, not only for the economy as a whole but also for the health of the banking system or financial system of the country.

Language Intermediaries and Local Agency: Peacebuilding, Translation/Interpreting and Political Disempowerment in ‘Mature’ Post-Dayton Bosnia–Herzegovina

The peace negotiations ending the 1992–95 Bosnian war established a constitutional system of ethnic power-sharing giving international peacebuilding a significant role in post-conflict Bosnia’s governance and economy. This indefinite mission depended – like any other intervention where foreigners work across linguistic boundaries – on interlinguistic mediation by locally-recruited translators/interpreters, an aspect of knowledge production that even current research into peacebuilding’s micropolitics often neglects. On an individual level, their frequently-overlooked agency was integral to peacebuilding practice. Yet theorizing their agency must also acknowledge the macrosocial level, where critics argue the post-war constitution has stripped Bosnians of political agency, foreclosing political participation as anything but ethnic subjects corresponding to three institutionalized ethnic identities. The entrenched, growing disconnect between political elites and the public, expressed through social protest in 2014, foregrounds agency and dis/empowerment in Bosnian society more sharply than pre-2014 research accounted for, revealing further interlinkages between international peacebuilding and domestic political contestation.

The politics of landscape as ways of life in the ‘divided’ city: reflections from Mostar, Bosnia–Herzegovina

ABSTRACT‘Divided’ cities – places of extreme exclusion and polarization – are sites where the paradox of both fragmentary and cosmopolitan capacity of the city comes to the fore. This article asks: What practices-in-landscape consolidate, construct and deconstruct the impression of a divided city? Drawing insights from the post-conflict Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the main argument I put forward is that urban infrastructures are a crucial medium through which social divisions and cohesions are performed and rearticulated on the ground. The article attends to the everyday of youth in Mostar turning to the politics of landscape as ways of life in the city.

International Judges on Constitutional Courts: Cautionary Evidence from Post-Conflict Bosnia

Hybrid constitutional courts are associated with deeply divided and post-conflict contexts where the impartiality of the domestic judiciary is suspect. Such courts enlist international (i.e., foreign) judges to create an ostensibly neutral counterbalance to the presumed political biases of local judges. This mixed-methods case study of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina questions the value of these hybrid courts. Contrary to what might be expected, the results of multidimensional scaling indicate that Bosnia’s foreign judges have not provided a reliable counterbalance to apparent ethno-national divisions on the Court. Furthermore, qualitative analysis suggests that the foreign judges have contributed to several strategic mistakes that have probably harmed the Court’s tenuous authority. It is also suggested that the presence of international judges on constitutional courts may actually discourage the kind of strategic behavior that is needed to build and sustain judicial power, particularly in deeply divided and post-conflict contexts.

Online ethnic segregation in a post-conflict setting

Existing research has shown that online networks are often segregated along identity lines, such as political ideology or religious views. Although online segregation should be specifically detrimental when appearing between ethnic groups in a post-conflict setting, to date we have no systematic evidence on the level of online ethnic segregation. To close this gap, the present study examines online ethnic segregation in a large ethnically mixed blogger network in a post-conflict society, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since politics has been found to enhance ethnic divides in the offline world, we additionally examine whether segregation is higher for bloggers engaging with political topics. Using large-scale web scraping, automated text analysis and Monte Carlo simulation, we find evidence for pronounced ethnic divisions. Furthermore, we find that political bloggers tend to have more ethnically segregated networks. The findings show that a broad public exchange transcending ethnic categories remains limited in the online context we study, and that those who dominate the online political debate tend to be those who in their social interactions put even more weight on ethnic categories than the average.

The Influence of Segregated Education on Security and Stability in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Influence of Segregated Education on Security and Stability in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

After ethnic conflict: Policy-making in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, written by Cvete Koneska

After ethnic conflict: Policy-making in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, written by Cvete Koneska

Hybridity, ethnicity and nationhood: legacies of interethnic war, wartime rape and the potential for bridging the ethnic divide in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACTRelying on the biographical narrative Leila, a girl from Bosnia and the recorded narratives by adolescents born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina we illustrate the difficulties and symbolic implications associated with negotiating hybrid identities in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina against the dominant post-conflict discourse based on ‘pure’ ethnicities. We argue that in today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina, hybrid identities are marginalized by official politics and societal structures as a legacy of the war. However, they simultaneously embody the symbolic tools through which ethnic divisions could be overcome, envisioning and recalling a multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina as a supra-national designation.

Book Review: Cvete Koneska, After Ethnic Conflict: Policy-Making in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia

Book Review: Cvete Koneska, <i>After Ethnic Conflict: Policy-Making in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia</i>

Policing hate crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACTStudying hate crimes in a country divided along sectarian lines, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, presents a substantial challenge for researchers. The consequences of hate crimes are multifaceted, and in an environment of institutional crime-control mechanisms that are still developing, these events can negatively affect society at large. Hate crimes often lead to ethnic and religious homogenisation, polarisation, intolerance, overt hatred and violence. This paper provides an overview of research findings relevant to policing hate crimes in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Special focus is placed on policing at three levels: government policy (strategies for action at the level of the interior ministries), police policy (the implementation of action strategies in lower organisational units) and police practice (police fieldwork). The study is primarily based on a qualitative approach including interviews, observations and secondary data analyses. The general findings indicate that crime control is inadequate and influenced by an apparent lack of political will to tackle the problem. Our findings also revealed the absence of any systematic approach to deal with hate crimes, which implied numerous problems in policing at all levels. Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a transitional post-conflict country, has a long way ahead in establishing law enforcement institutions that will enable the rule of law, protect human rights and ensure political accountability.

Are educational governance reforms in a post-conflict society conforming to global standards? Examining the application of education convergence theory in an internationally supervised and politicized context

This article examines whether and to what extent educational reforms in a post-conflict society conform to “global (regional) standards,” and explores the meaning of inconsistencies observed in the process of global reform transfer. Among the nations of the world, nowhere is the influence of external forces on educational reforms more evident than in post-conflict nations under close international supervision. A case study of post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina revealed that not only policies but also national legislation conformed to European democratic norms, while the externally-induced and somewhat contradictory reforms of centralization and decentralization did not materialize in practice. Ultimately, policy–practice gaps and changeability of global reform models may be expected since they leave room for strategic interactions between national and international actors based on the pragmatic considerations of both parties to achieve their own mandates and purposes.

Peace and Justice through a Feminist Lens: Gender Justice and the Women’s Court for the Former Yugoslavia

ABSTRACTPost-conflict interventions to ‘deal with’ violent pasts have moved from exception to global norm. Early efforts to achieve peace and justice were critiqued as ‘gender-blind’—for failing to address sexual and gender-based violence, and neglecting the gender-specific interests and needs of women in transitional settings. The advent of UN Security Council resolutions on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ provided a key policy framework for integrating both women and gender issues into transitional justice processes and mechanisms. Despite this, gender justice and equality in (post-)conflict settings remain largely unachieved. This article explores efforts to attain gender-just peace in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It critically examines the significance of a recent ‘bottom-up’ truth-telling project—the Women’s Court for the former Yugoslavia—as a locally engaged approach to achieving justice and redress for women impacted by armed conflict. Drawing on participant observation, documentary analysis, and interviews with women activists, the article evaluates the successes and shortcomings of responding to gendered forms of wartime violence through truth-telling. Extending Nancy Fraser’s tripartite model of justice to peacebuilding contexts, the article advances notions of recognition, redistribution and representation as crucial components of gender-just peace. It argues that recognizing women as victims and survivors of conflict, achieving a gender-equitable distribution of material and symbolic resources, and enabling women to participate as agents of transitional justice processes are all essential for transforming the structural inequalities that enable gender violence and discrimination to materialize before, during, and after conflict.