The teahouse network : alternative discourses on ethno-nationalistic identification among youngsters in Sarajevo

The Teahouse Network

Alternative Discourses on Ethno-Nationalistic Identification

among Youngsters in Sarajevo

Camiel van Hove

Student Number 5615992

MSc. Cultural and Social Anthropology

Universiteit van Amsterdam; Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS)

Master Thesis

Supervised by dr. R.J. van Ginkel

Second readers: dr. A.T Strating; dr. O.G.A. Verkaaik

Amsterdam, 06-10-2015

Wordcount: 27.342 words

csvanhove@gmail.com

Declaration: I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy [published on http://www.student.uva.nl/fraude-plagiaat/voorkomen.cfm]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.

List of Contents

Chapter 1. “Welcome to the craziest country in the world”. 21 The current situation and dominant discourses

Chapter 2. Foundations and formulations of alternative 35 discourses in Sarajevo

Chapter 3 Experience of tensions and conflicts between the 51 discourses within and without the teahouse network.

Conclusion 67

Acknowledgements

Many people have supported me in the process of preparing my research, conducting fieldwork, and writing the final thesis. Of course I would like to name them all, and I have them all in mind. I would like to thank firstly Rob van Ginkel, who´s comments and advices have helped me to do this project and to develop myself as a student. In that respect I would also like to thank Francio Guadeloupe, Yolanda van Ede and Kristine Krausse, who over the last two years helped me to reflect critically over the material, theories and the practical concerns of my fieldwork.

Of course this project wouldn´t be possible without many friends from Bosnia. I would like to thank all of them, but especially Zizzy, Elmir and Ervin for planting the seeds out of which this research has risen. Of course I would like to give lots of thanks to Merima U, Merima K, Dzjemil, Haris, Ado, Milan, Jasna, Tarik, Nera, Anel, Hanna, Mojmir, Leana, Muhammis, Laura, Basti, Martina, Sasja, Nikolaj, Faris, Adnan, Azra, Kimeta, Maja, Sharon, Dzjeno, Xandra, Anne, Jessica, Vedran, Neijara and Anna. Since, if they wouldn´t have been there, this fieldwork wouldn´t have been as rich and inspiring as it has been. In this regard I also would like to thank the persons who have nearly served as family in Bosnia, by hanging out every day, translating, arranging things and making me feel at home more than I have ever felt anywhere before. In this light, I would like to thank Amer, Dzjana, Vina and Ayla. Last but not least, I would like to thank Dino, Elmin and Hussain for being as close as brothers. Of course, many thanks go out to Paul deSwardt and Emily Jupitus for reviewing and correcting this thesis.

For all the motherly support before and after my fieldwork I would like to thank Gabriëlle as well, and promise her that the next time I’ll come back from fieldwork I’ll make sure that the plane lands in one attempt.

During the writing I was really glad to have the critical reflections of Corina, and to be able to discuss and review my work with her inspiring angles.

For giving me unconditional joy and patitas, I would like to thank Casimiro, who has chosen me as one of the very few humans in his close circle.

Last but best, I would like to thank Verónica, whose amazing being in the world and whose wonderful love has helped me getting the best out of myself.

Introduction

Vignette, the ever re-emerging story of Hana

“So, what are you going to write about us?” Hana asks me while we are sitting on Dino’s balcony, nibbling at a piece of grilled lamb and drinking a beer on the surprise party Dino and Elmin have organized for my goodbye. It takes me a little moment to answer since in that moment I realize that I won’t see all of my friends and interlocutors for a long time, and on a more practical note, that I still have to pack my bags and won’t have many sleep, since the surprise party really came as an

unexpected surprise to me. In the background Ismet is playing guitar and singing Sevda songs, and some ten persons are listening and enjoying themselves. Everybody has brought some food and drinks, so the balcony is packed with food, plates and glasses.

Hana notices my silence and starts with telling me what so many have told me during these three months in interviews: “Listen, Bosnia is complicated. There are three recognized people in this country. Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs. Being one of them means that you can chose a president and members of parliament. But many young people don’t see themselves in this way, and therefore we can’t vote. We are not regarded as a part of Bosnia when we don’t do exactly as our parents have told us. Even when I am a good muslim, I still don’t believe in this, but I can only choose to be a Bosniac, or be left out…” I ask her if she sees an opportunity for change. “We try really hard, but it will take long, you know? Bosnia is really complicated, and I wonder if you will ever understand it…”

This vignette is taken from a short field note of my last evening in Sarajevo during my fieldwork, but really special since it was the first time somebody really asked me about what I have founded during my research and what I will write about the group of friends nicknamed ‘the Teahouse Network’. But it contains the description of the problem many of them have with living in Sarajevo. In this thesis I’ll describe these problems and their attempts to find a solution for them.

Nationalism has long been a subject of social scientific research, particularly since the 1980’s (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002: 303-305), and it plays a part in identification processes and

community formation. However it encompasses ideologies and narrations which can be opposed. On a meta-level, debates about identification have played a major role in the studies of nationalism and ethnicity (Alonso 1994; Somers 1994; Cerulo 1997; Jenkins 2008a; Jenkins 2008b). In this thesis I aim to explore how young adults between the ages between 20 and 35 are dealing with nationalistic discourses in Sarajevo. Over a period of three months of fieldwork I discovered how the nationalistic discourses in Bosnia-Herzegovina are contested by some and embraced by others. Nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been and still is part of a vast societal conflict. Bosnia-Herzegovina has been

involved in a violent and destructive civil war after the break-up of Yugoslavia and the claim for independence in the 1990’s, and has since that war experienced ongoing tensions between different ethno-nationalistic categories (Maček 2009; Jansen 2014).

The ideological conflict of the civil war was targeted at those who belonged to the country, and to whom – that is to say, which nationalistic community – the country belonged. There was a division made between Bosniacs, Serbs and Croats, which follows ethnic narratives and religious identification. Roughly speaking, the Bosniacs consisted of the Islamic part of the population, the Serbs of the Orthodox part of the population and the Croats of the Catholic part of the population. Today, Bosnia-Herzegovina is a country which – according to its constitution – consists of three constitutive peoples (Croats, Serbs and Bosniacs) who should all be equally represented in politics. This has resulted in a country headed by 14 governments, all with quite equal power positions, all within two states in one federal nation-state, headed by three presidents who can only be elected along nationalistic lines. This means that you can only elect a president who is Serb, Bosniac or Croat, according to your own ‘ethnicity’ and only give a supportive vote for nationalism. Even worse, as some of my informants told me, you can only become a representative politician if you identify with these nationalistic categories, which means that people who do not support these ideas are unable to participate in the democratic process.

This system is actively contested by the youngsters with whom I conducted my fieldwork in Sarajevo. In this thesis I will explore their ways of resisting these nationalistic structures, the struggles connected to this resistance and the narratives and discourses which legitimate these structures. I will first show how nationalism is expressed through identification processes in Sarajevo, and how opposition to nationalism is expressed through processes of identification as well. After having done so, I will analyse the different discourses that are created to resist the nationalistic system and how they play a role in the social networks that were around in Sarajevo. In the last chapter I will look into how the resistance was lived; the daily impact on the lives of my informants and the struggles that were brought together with the resistance. I will argue that, although my interlocutors tried to oppose nationalism, they still couldn’t get past the underlying structures of nationalism in the process of identifying themselves.

Research questions

The main question to be answered is how young adults in Sarajevo relate to discourses of ethno-nationalistic categories of identification, and I will do so by exploring to which discourses they relate; how they experience conflict; under what circumstances they relate to these discourses; and what

Theoretical framework

In this thesis I will make an argument that contributes to the extensive amount of theories on identity and on nationalism. It is necessary to first provide us with a clear definition of these two concepts. Although I will introduce other theories in the following chapters, I will present you first with the most important theoretical ideas to create a framework for understanding the three main concepts in my argument; identity and identity-formation, discourses and nationalism.

Identity and identity-formation

An important notion regarding the debates on identification which is generally agreed upon by different scholars is that identification is a dynamic process in which an image of the self against an ‘other’ is generated and maintained (see Somers 1994; Cerulo 1997; Brubaker 2002; Jenkins 2008a; Golubović 2011). Many definitions have been given, however there does seem to be some mutual agreement regarding identification and the (heavily debated) concept of identity. It is generally agreed that they have to do with similarity and difference, that they can be individual and collective and are always processes which vary in different social settings. They are processes of defining who is who, which can be done by actors about both themselves and about other actors. There have been debates in which scholars saw identity distinguished from difference, since it was a recognition of similarity (Jenkins 2008a: 18-20). However, as Barth (1969), Cerulo (1997), Collins (2004), Jenkins (2008a) and Golubović (2011) have argued, similarity and difference can only be understood in interaction with others, and there can never be total similarity and total difference in that interaction, albeit only because in order to interact, certain patterns, mutual understandings and structures are established. Since it is necessary in order to create a ‘we’ and an ‘us’, and to create a ‘belonging’ and an understanding of community, difference is needed, and can only be established during interaction with others, both included in or excluded from the ‘us’.

I’ll discuss the contributions of these writers in the section below and focus on the particular contribution of each of these scholars, starting with Cerulo (1997) and Jenkins (2008a) since they have presented works that provide us with an overview of the debates on identity.

Cerulo (1997) describes the shift from studying identity at an individual level towards a collective and discursive level. Here, identity is constructed situationally, and the roles of agency, self-direction and new communication technologies are analyzed. She describes the role of social movements and highlights Piore’s findings about how these social movements can transform into “… identity-based movements as isolated, cohesive ‘communities of meaning’.” (Cerulo 1997: 394). She

to define a network of actors and social relations as one uniform community with closed boundaries, in which all actors are, think and act similar – the own community and the “other” in processes of identification.

Jenkins (2008a) has described the process of identification as taking place on both the individual and the collective level in analogue processes, and he issues that the “…proper sociological place for the concept of ‘identity’ is at the heart of our thinking about the relationships between concrete individual behavior and the necessary abstraction of collectivity” (Jenkins 2008a: 40). He suggests that to understand identity one should analyze it in three distinct orders in which humans construct and experience the social world; the individual order (as a world made up by ‘embodied’ individuals), the interaction order (made up of the interactions between those individuals), and the institutional order (human organization and structuring of society by rules and social codes

(institutions). Jenkins stresses that processes of identification are not only about internal

identification, but also about external identification in the form of labelling (as in being identified by others) and the possible internal and external frictions which can follow from these identification processes (Jenkins 2008a: 37-48).

Some specific arguments are made in these debates by scholars like Crain, Somers,

Baumann, Brubaker and Golubović. These arguments have to do especially with the narratives and discourses connected to collective identification, although they also apply to certain parts of identification on an individual level. Before exploring the additions they made to the debates on identity, it is important to stress that authors on the topics of ethnicity and nationalism also agree upon the importance of narratives and discourses in collective processes of identification. However, I will discuss their contributions in a separate section.

Golubović (2011) highlights the role of inscription, and the ways inscription of collective forms of identity can conflict with individual forms, in which moments of a “crisis of identity” (ibid: 33) occur. She identifies the use of the concept ‘identity’ in different terms, as a “national/ethnic identity” (Golubović 2011: 26) and as a “cultural identity” (ibid: 26). The latter is dynamic, multiple and both individualistic and collective. The national/ethnic identity, however, is based upon national/ethnic traditions and narratives and thus is not open to reinterpretation, change and individual identity formation. These ‘identities’ can partially be chosen and express themselves in multiple ways. However identity can also become dangerous when cultural patterns change and personal identification comes into conflict with collective identities with conflicting sets of norms and

values. When identity becomes contested and collective identity frameworks are politicized, this can lead to conflicts.

The use and transformation of the narrative used to create a ‘national identity’ played a crucial part in Bosnia during and after the war. There are two important theories about the use of discourse and narratives, those of Baumann (1996) and Somers (1994). The difference between Baumann’s and Somers’ approaches lies in their point of departure. Narratives differ from discourses in the sense that narratives describe a historicity in which the current social world has come into being in history and continues to move towards a future. They exert power especially over the imagination. Discourses on the other hand also exert power, but more in creating the framework of language, concepts and definitions of social reality. The main similarity therefore is that both narratives and discourses create a framework of meaning and reasoning and exert power, but the main difference is that the one is an ideational representation with a storyline defining an ideal social world, while the other is more of a framework of thoughts and meaning to define the current reality. Baumann (1996) states that discourses about community and culture are central to

identifying the self and the other in public discourse, and specifically recognizes two kinds of discourses; dominant and demotic. He states there is a dominant discourse, in which identity is connected with reified communities, each having their own reified culture, however he adds the use of what he calls a demotic discourse (Baumann 1996: 10). A demotic discourse is an alternative discourse in which the connection between community and culture is denied, since actors identify with different categories situationally, going back and forward constantly, and therefore these discourses can overlap and are intertwined. Relating to ‘a’ community is a situational act and the movement between those reified categories shows the fluidity of the social boundaries. This fluidity constitutes the process of identity formation on an individual level, in relation to collective levels. Especially this demotic discourse is used to contest the dominant discourse by recreating and altering community boundaries in order to have a stronger position in the field of (collective and individual) power.

This connects well to what Somers (1994) calls ontological narratives and public narratives. She notes that identity and agency have been studied as though they are determined by categories without problematizing the universality and uniformity of these categories, and argues for a narrative approach in studying identity. Therefore she introduces the argument of the narrative identity. The argument is that people base identities upon a repertoire of narratives and try to make sense of their social environments, and events connected to it, by embedding them in narratives and deriving from these narratives processes of collective and individual identification. Somers states

that “[t]he importance of … narrativity is … that it allows us to build upon the advances and

simultaneously to transcend the fixity if the identity concept as it is often used in current approaches to social agency. Joining narrative to identity reintroduces time, space and analytical relationality” (Somers 1994: 621).

Brubaker (2002) takes the argument further to all categories of identification. He signals a phenomenon in identity politics which he calls Groupism, and describes as “the tendency to take discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous and externally bounded groups as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis” (ibid: 164). He argues against the use of the concept of ‘group’ as an analytical tool for research, especially in social conflicts which are labeled as ethnic, since this can reinforce these discourses and empowers ethno-political entrepreneurs who use these categories. Therefore he pledges for conceptualizing ethnicity and nationalism “…in relational, processual, dynamic, eventful and disaggregated terms”(ibid: 167). He describes ethnicity and nationhood as existing “…only in and through our perceptions, interpretations, representations, categorizations and identifications. They are not things in the world, but perceptions on the world” (ibid: 174-175).

Nationalism, Ethno-Nationalism and Identification

In the debates on nationalism and ethnicity, scholars have reached agreement on several grounds. The theories of Barth and Anderson have been heavily influential in this field. Scholars agree that in studying ethnicity the generating and maintAylance of boundaries between ethnic groups deserve the researcher’s attention. The ways in which they are generated and maintained in social processes of interaction allow us to understand how identification with ethnic categories by individuals and collectives of themselves and ‘others’ works and how the conditions for both in- and exclusion within these categories are constituted (Barth 1969; Alonso 1994; Jenkins 2008a; Wimmer 2009; Golubović 2011). Nationalism is seen as a specific process of identification connected to striving for and belonging to a nation-state, in which the image of the nation as a entity continuous through space and time and a legitimate existence in the world is crucial for projects to enhance collective identification within the nation-state (Crain 1990; Anderson 1991; Alonso 1994; Gupta & Ferguson 1996; Maček 2009).

Barth made a famous argument stating that studies of ethnicity should be directed towards the constitution and maintAylance of ethnic boundaries rather than studying ethnic groups as units of people with corresponding cultures. This Aylables us to see ethnicity as a matter of ascription and identification, by the actors themselves, and to understand the processes in which ethnic categories

how in interaction between them these categories can be maintained. The boundaries are social, and are formed in interactions between different actors by recognizing membership of ethnic

communities and the cultural factors and shared criteria for evaluation and judgement that are relevant in processes of in- and exclusion. Therefore they can only be recognized in interaction with others, since only then can be understood where mutual understanding is or is not shared, and where the boundary between the category and the ‘other’ is. Therefore, these interactions are structured so that cultural differences can persist and the boundaries remain intact (Barth 1969: 9-38).

Anderson (1991) has made a famous argument stating that nationalism has developed in history as a conscious project to bind nations together, by creating the necessary conditions for people to identify with others in the nation through a sense of belonging to an “imagined

community”, which is the nation. It is imagined since it is impossible in a nation to know all members of this community, and there is a suggestion of similarity, leaving out all aspects of inequality like class, gender, social background, religion and so on. The processes in which this image is created are mostly consciously designed by political entities, and have to do with the creation of certain

standards like a common language, common means of measurement, common ideas about territory and common ideas about history, in order to Aylable identification through the imagination of belonging to a community with a continuous existence in space and time.

Alonso (1994) reviews the development of ideas on nationalism and ethnicity, and theories of how nationalistic and ethnic categories of identification are created in the process of state-formation. She analyses the conscious creation in processes of state-formation, of discourses which helps the nation-state to legitimize itself. These discourses are defined by Alonso as nationalistic when it refers to a dominant nation with territorial power and as ethnic when they refer to a nation within another (dominant) nation´s territory. Alonso puts stress on the study of processes in which nationalism and ethnicity are shaped rather than using the concepts as analytical tools.

Wimmer (2009) makes a similar argument against the tendency to see ethnicity as a fixed self-evident unit of analysis. He offers a critique on the use of Herder’s ontology - of the world as “…made up of peoples each distinguished by a unique culture (1), held together by communitarian solidarity (2), and bound by shared identity (3)” (Wimmer 2009: 246). In this worldview the ontology is used statically in identifying nations and ethnic groups, which are closed categories of analysis without recognizing these as relational, and as historical outcomes of a dynamic process, and therefore disregarding the ability of change of these categories. By exploring three critiques on this use, Wimmer offers a new approach to understanding the process of ““ethnicisation”…as a

self-reinforcing process of defining, shaping, and reacting upon social reality in its ethnic dimension…” (Wimmer 2009: 253), regarding the development of various narratives of identity, belonging and exclusion by actors in historically constituted fields.

Theoretical conclusions

All above scholars have described identity, nationalism and ethnicity as phenomAyla which are dynamic, intersubjective processes which require interaction, take place on the individual and the collective level and have to do with defining who is who. To study these processes it is crucial to analyse the active creation and maintAylance of markers of similarity and difference, and of social boundaries between different categories. This has been important in gaining and analysing the ethnographic material that I present in this thesis. In the next session I will discuss the methods I used during my research and how I selected my interlocutors to provide an insight in how these data were collected.

Methods

During my fieldwork I dedicated most of my time to hanging out with a group of youngsters, most of them students. I saw them in their daily public life, and in some cases got introduced to their more private lives including their homes, families and close friends. During the contact I had with them, I saw mainly how they presented themselves to the outside world and, in some cases, how they built their networks on their personal opinions towards the outside world.

My methods contain mainly participant observation, and brought me into the settings where they drink coffee, eat, study, chat, gossip, relax and in some places where they came in touch with official instances to (for example) pay their bills or request official documents. I mainly spent my time with them in two coffeehouses1, a university canteen and bars, but later on in my fieldwork also in their homes, cars or worksites. What is important to keep in mind about the settings is that most of them are not only public, but also designated to be places where people meet and come together.

Most of the time the participant observation I did was drinking coffee, sitting on the same spot for hours and hours. Because conversations were openly held in English (in order to include me) I participated in the talking, joking and gossiping. This contains a danger in that there were a lot of instances where I had to operate carefully to make sure I didn’t put my own opinions and judgement upon their conversations. Also it was difficult to be in a position where gossip about other people

was really common, and really easy to partake in. This made that was constantly aware of a conflict in ethical concerns and safeguarding my position in the field.

To get some more insight into how people wanted to present themselves towards others and to have the possibility to triangulate my material, I conducted some 25 interviews, mostly

unstructured or very loosely structured. Also I had small conversations in which I asked participants to elaborate more on certain topics when I didn’t fully understand them. Five special interviews were conducted while walking through town based on the environment and cityscape, which provide material hang-ups to the interviews. During these interviews monuments, destroyed buildings, empty shops and (bullet)holes in the road provided material to talk about living in post-war Sarajevo and about the political and economic situation of the country.

I went to Sarajevo with the idea to form a snowball sample of the population by contacting some students and one study-association. However this only partially worked, and it seemed after a while that my population had selected me to be in their close surroundings rather than the other way around. I gained most of my population simply by being lucky enough to walk into the right coffee shop to warm up with a coffee on a cold Tuesday afternoon. While I went inside and looked around, feeling a bit stressed since I had been looking for one specific place, the owner and one of the visitors started to talk to me and ease me down a bit, which is how I met my key-informant and sponsor Dino.

Dino is a main figure in the group of friends which will be my focus in this thesis. It consisted of some 25 persons, of which 15 met at least several times a week. Although it might look like one group, there are some subgroups within this group in which I also participated later on in my

fieldwork. The group consisted mostly of persons in the ages between 25 and 35, with some younger and one older exception. Most of them were a part of the middle-class and upper middle-class, and all of them on the surface shared a deep repulsion for the nationalistic views in Bosnia. I will

introduce these persons and the main dynamics and structure of this network in my thesis, but firstly it is important to say the following about this group, nicknamed the teahouse-network2 by one of my informants.

2

Technically speaking, the ‘network’ is a group of friends and acquaintances which hangout in several teahouses and coffee shops. The nickname ‘Teahouse Network’ was given by Ado and Vina, since the group used to meet each other several times a day in different teahouses and coffee shops. These meetings happened occasionally and without appointments between all members (of course sometimes people had appointments among each other).

An important factor in connecting persons to the group was the location where they meet to drink coffee or tea and to start other social activities from. The group moved around town in

between three coffee houses and the university-canteen. One of the coffeehouses was used as the central meeting point, and basically one could always go there to encounter others from the group. However this made quite impossible to go to that place without being in touch with this group, or to escape some of its members while seeing the others. Because of the going around town Ado

nicknamed the network ‘the Teahouse-network’, probably due to the fact that he didn’t drink coffee and one of the usual hangouts specialized in tea.

One commonality most of the members had is that they had lived outside of the country for a longer time. The civil war in the country made their families leave when they were all still kids, and through this temporal status of being a refugee, and in some cases later part of the diaspora, ideas on nationalism became highly contested, discussed and sometimes hated in this group. Some of its members had to deal with seriously traumatized family members (parents, older siblings,

grandparents etc.) which marked their visions upon Bosnian nationhood and the subdivision of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina into three constitutive peoples connected to ethno-nationalism with close ties to religion.

A second commonality is closely linked to the above, and lies in a similar opinion about nationalism. Although to some persons the rejection and aversion to these nationalistic discourses is more stringent and active than to others, this commonality leads to a constant awarAmers of

nationalistic or religious expressions, and caused many discussions on the topic. Some of the persons are less opposed to ethno-nationalistic discourses, and one person turned out to be particularly in favour of nationalism as a binding factor within the country – a capital sin in the network, which indirectly led to him being dropped out severely – and challenged the group constantly with his ideas.

This aversion against ethno-nationalistic discourses caused a widespread belief in conspiracy theories within the group, where the ethno-nationalistic discourses are problematized as being a creation of corrupt politicians and businessmen in order to gain and maintain a powerful position within the elite of the society. The line of thought is – briefly summarized – that in order to keep the mass away from looking at corruption and nepotism in the national politics and main corporations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a conflict must be created and nationalism is used to mobilize people against each other instead of united against corruption and nepotism. On a more macro-scale it is believed that nationalism is used by international powers and corporations to get money and resources out of

the country. I can’t make any claim over the veracity and validity of these theories, but I will explore their function in the aversion of nationalism and the creation of alternative discourses.

The reason I decided to focus on the group had to do with my access to this group. From my third day I was acquainted with three of the core members, and within a very short time they and other members became my friends. I met Dino, Elmin and Vina by entering the coffeehouse they attended daily (in Vina’s case, where she worked), and quickly got into a conversation with them which would continue every day after for the three months of fieldwork. Although there were other groups and networks I became acquainted with, providing me also with interesting material, this group was a group wherein identity politics, nationalism and the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina were highly discussed.

In no way do I want to claim that this group represents the ‘common’ young-adult person in Sarajevo, since I think they are exceptionally open with their views and opinions. However they do represent more persons – especially in Sarajevo, which as a city was traditionally regarded as cosmopolitan and multi-cultural. My decision to focus on this particular group doesn’t mean that I will fully leave out other persons. In other groups I have detected certain patterns of thinking and talking as well, which I will explore briefly whenever this provides us with a new angle on the presented material.

Beyond Sarajevo

My aim in this thesis is to show how processes of identification against strong discourses on nationalism and ethnicity work out, and to explore the reception of discourses on identity,

nationalism and ethnicity. Many theories have been discussing identity politics, especially in the case of nationalism, as projects heavily influenced by a certain elite. In this case there was actually an active opposition to these projects, and a conscious attempt to change the ways of thinking about belonging to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Europe and the global world, in which nationalistic thinking was usually rejected. Therefore I show how this is the case in Sarajevo and argue that when actors are aware of the use of nationalistic and ethnic discourses in order to exert a certain form of power by an elite that these actors reject, they can actively engage in bottom-up projects to resist these

discourses by formulating alternative forms of nationalism and belonging.

I’ll start this thesis with an explanatory chapter on the current situation and how this is lived, then I’ll explore the alternative discourses on nationalism and identity, and in the last chapter I’ll show the ambiguities that the youngsters faced between these alternative forms and the more dominant discourses in Sarajevo.

Chapter 1.

“Welcome to the craziest country in the world”. The current situation

and dominant discourses

Intro vignette, Amer’ tour

“Welcome to the craziest country in the world!” is the sentence which Amer uses as the standard introduction to his city tour through Sarajevo. A group of American and Australian tourists stands with us on the ‘Sarajevan rose’3 _{in front of the cathedral. Amer is a 32-year old man with a PhD in}

geography, who works as a tour guide in Sarajevo. He briefly explained the political situation in Bosnia when we were standing in front of the Catholic cathedral, patiently, with a smile, and with a sigh when one of the tourist asked him if there had been a war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “In this country we have three presidents, fourteen governments, two republics, two foreign armies, one-hundred and ninety-eight political parties, two thousand minefields and no jobs.” The smile on his face expresses a deep sarcasm unnoticed by the tourists who are listening with an expression of confusion. As we walk through the city, Amer points out the highlights with an endless patience, but also with sometimes un-hideable irritation. “This is the only town in the world with a huge Mosque, Cathedral, Orthodox Church and Synagogue within 500 meters from each other, this reflects how we have been living along each other for years and years, and shows the true soul of this country without the propaganda some people want you to believe. Questions?” After a short silence, one American tourist asks Amer if he is a muslim. Amer pauses a while: “I don’t know if that is important, since this question has caused a lot of problems in the past. Religion shouldn’t be a public thing here. It has been made that by many politicians, and if you ask me, that’s just to hide the problems they cause with their propaganda and corruption.”

Amer tells the story in jokes with a great enthusiasm, but the story he shares has a deep sadness in it and it is seen by him and many young adults in Bosnia-Herzegovina as the cause of a miserable situation in which the country is still stuck. It is crucial to explore the situation for the understanding of the ways my interlocutors discussed belonging to Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this chapter I will therefore give a brief explanation of the problem, and explore the role of nationalism in Sarajevo. I will introduce some of my interlocutors and show how they see the impact of the

3 _{A Sarajevan rose is a crater caused by a bullet or grAylade fired during the siege of Sarajevo. It is usually filled}

situation upon their lives. As I will show the current frameworks of identity are regarded by them as causes of the economic problems and as a cause for the political situation and phenomAyla like corruption, nepotism and patronage. As I will show, my interlocutors are struggling with the feeling of the inability to fully belong to society in Sarajevo, because they refuse to Hanapt to the ethno-nationalistic discourses. I will show how this works later, but first it is crucial to understand some parts of the recent history of Bosnia-Herzegovina.4

The recent history

A common phrase in Sarajevo to describe the Balkans and its past is ‘the land of blood and honey’5, a description which is told to be referring to a past full of war and conflict over the fertile lands of the region. In recent history the area has been suffering from conflict and it has formed the images of nationhood and ethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this chapter I describe the impacts of the 1990’s armed conflict in the country, the solutions which stopped the violence and the effects these solutions have had on contemporary society in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although the historical

narratives on the region are multiple and go back for thousands of years, it serves my argument only to discuss the recent history. Historical narratives in Bosnia-Herzegovina are, as in all nation-states, highly connected to ethno-nationalistic discourses, and therefore it is important to regard any historical narrative as only one interpretation of history told from one subjective perspective, as we have seen in the introduction in Somers argument.

Most important is how Somers (1994) has emphasized the importance of narratives in the formation of identity, and pointed at the situationality of identity. In different situations and social settings individuals can draw from narratives to create a shared “narrative identity” (Somers 1994: 164). As we will see, in the situation in Bosnia these ‘narrative identities’ are partially connected to narratives on shared histories of suffering, and hence of feelings of hostility towards ‘others’ responsible for this suffering.

With this in mind it is important to find a way to make sense of the current situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina by exploring the history of this nation-state. As a starting point I take the death of Josip Broz Tito and the subsequent disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

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Although an extensive amount of literature on this history exists, I’ll limit myself to a very brief summary of the most important history and events. For further reading on the breakup of Yugoslavia and its aftermath, see (amongst others) Bideleux & Jeffries (2007); Doder (1993); Finlan (2004); Flere (2007); Glenny (1996); Mazower (1998); Riedlmayer (2002); Rogel (1998). For a broader history on the Balkan region see (amongst others) Friedman (2003); Mazower (2000); Pinson (1992)

After the death of Josip Broz, the then president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in 1980 the republic was ruled by a circulating presidency in which all six republics and two

autonomous provinces had a seat, and delivered the president for one year every eight years.6 Tito had ruled Yugoslavia with the idea that unity in Yugoslavia was more important than ethnic or religious identity, and that the latter for that reason should only be expressed in private, and not be part of the public discourse. After his death these matters started to re-emerge in the public

discourse, causing tensions among the Socialist Republics (Maček 2009: 124-127). In 1991 this led to the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, and a violent armed conflict between the new nation-states and Yugoslavia.

In the wake of the independences of Slovenia and Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992 after a positive vote in a referendum organised by Islamic politicians lead by Izetbegovic. The results of this referendum were boycotted by Serbian-Orthodox politicians in Bosnia-Herzegovina led by Karadzic, and what followed was a destructive civil war in which over 100,000 people died and in which genocide and ethnic cleansing played a major part. During this war, ethno-nationalistic identification based upon religious background and

complemented with fear and hatred towards other ethno-nationalistic categories started to play a major role in the conflict and after the conflict in Bosnian society.

Maček describes this phenomenon with the terms religious background” and “ethno-national identity” (Maček 2009: 124) and connects the “ethno-nationalistic movements after Tito’s death to the ethno-religious background. In her argument, this ethno-religious background had to do with religious traditions within the family, which were regarded private in the secular Yugoslavian society. This background was regarded as only a small part of identity formation, since in the secular society “ethno-religious background was not a strong factor by which people were differentiated, especially in public and social life” (Maček 2009: 124).

The shift to ethno-national identity started just before the war, but was extremely enhanced by the war and the insecurity of life connected to the war. Maček states that the death of Tito and the economic crisis following the fall of communism in the former Yugoslavia made people resistant to the socialist discourse of ´one Yugoslav identity´ and therewith broke the political project of the Tito regime to create a national identity connected to Yugoslavia. Instead of believing in discourses of

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Yugoslavia was by constitution divided in 6 socialistic republics, united in the Socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia, and ruled by Josip Broz (nicknamed Tito) The Socialistic Republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and MacDinonia had an equal vote in the national parliament, together with the Socialist Autonomous Provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina

a shared Yugoslav identity people started identifying moreover with the former ethno-nationalistic frameworks of identity of being Serb, MacDinonian, Croat, Montenegrin or Slovene. However Bosnia-Herzegovina didn’t have a Bosnian national identity since the country consisted of a population with mixed religious backgrounds and has been claimed by both Serbia and Croatia due to the part of the population which had the same religious backgrounds – that is orthodox and catholic – as these nations. Besides these shared backgrounds, significant parts of the population had an Islamic background or came from families with a mixed background.

In this light, Maček argues, there was a logical rejection among Bosnians of these nationalist mobilizations since Bosnians identified themselves in multiple ways. This is to say not only by their ethno-religious background and connected national identity, but also by the regional identity of being Bosnian. Bosnians considered themselves and were known by others for “tolerance, good will, and conscious desire for co-operative and civil relationships” (Sorabji 1993: 33-34, in Maček 2009: 126). Although there were nationalist movements directed on Serbian or Croatian nationalism, before the war most Bosnians didn’t feel attracted by any nationalist movement. But why did this change shortly before, during and after the conflict? Maček hints at another change in Bosnian society, namely the shift from a non-nationalistic welfare state towards a capitalist society. She argues that during this shift people were afraid that people of one of the ethnic groups would be able to claim economic dominance over the other categories, and thereby create or enhance a position of power over the other categories (Maček 2009: 127-128).

During the war these economic insecurities were one of the many uncertainties in the struggle to survive, which made people cling desperately to every security they had. Belonging to a group was regarded as one of these securities, especially when this group was based on an ethno-nationalist identity and backed by some economically and politically powerful people offering protection against violence from persons of other ethno-nationalistic backgrounds. In exchange for their support they demanded a form of political loyalty, which Aylabled them to gain, maintain and enhance their influence and political power in post-war society.

Although the war did start with an attempt from the Yugoslavian army to keep Bosnia-Herzegovina within Yugoslavia, it was fought out among nationalistic lines in which people were marked as being part of three categories: Bosniacs, Bosnian-Serbs and Bosnian-Croats. These categories all claimed domination over (parts of) the country, and in more radical cases demanded relocation of citizens with other ethno-nationalistic identities (Maček 2009: 230, 231).

protect the city. After the war many people who fled Sarajevo didn’t return and the city’s population plunged. The war deeply divided the country, and was only stopped after three and a half years with a treaty imposed by the European Union and NATO.

This treaty, known as the Dayton-Agreements, includes an appendix in which a supposed-to-be emergency constitution was formulated. This constitution, which is still unchanged, states Bosnia-Herzegovina to be a nation inhabited by three constitutive people: Bosnian-Croats, Bosniacs and Bosnian-Serbs. These constitutive people are defined by religion and descent. Roughly speaking, the Bosnian-Serbs have a Serbian-Orthodox religion, the Croats have the Catholic religion and the Bosniacs were supposed to encompass everybody else, but is as a category fully dominated by Islamic religious identification.

However, this has many implications for the way the country is governed, of which the most important ones have to do with representation. Not only is the country ruled by a presidency consisting of three presidents, congruent with the representation of the three constitutive peoples, but also one of the two parliamentary organs of Bosnia-Herzegovina is chosen via ethno-nationalistic lines.

To make matters more complicated, the country is divided into two states, the federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska, both governed by their own governmental organs, which are also sending their representatives to the federal government. This means that the

democratic structure is already based on in- and exclusion along ethno-nationalistic criteria. In a system in which representation is structured around belonging to a certain category, people actually have to belong to one of these categories to be able to take part in the democratic process. What makes the situation even more complicated is that the biggest political parties openly express their support for nationalistic ideologies, and in some cases express this support in their names. Politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina are therefore highly related with inter-ethnic tensions which are structurally embedded in the political system. Any political attempt to get a voice to people who do not feel associated with these ideals would fail structurally, since the electoral system is entirely based on ethno-nationalistic representation.

To make this point clear, it is fruitful to study the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Articles IV and V show clearly how the chambers of government and the three presidents can only be elected along ethno-nationalistic lines, and how belonging to one of the two entities defines and limits a person’s possibilities to vote. Shortly stated, when one identifies with one of the three categories, but isn’t living in a connected entity, or when one doesn’t identify with one of the three

ethno-nationalistic groups at all – for example, because one belongs to a Roma minority or is atheist – one cannot participate in elections, let alone be elected to the parliament.7

This leads to a lot of irritation among groups who feel left out, since the democratic way to have influence in the society in Bosnia-Herzegovina is blocked for them unless they conform with the nationalistic discourses and adopt one of the ethno-nationalistic identities. I’ll elaborate on these frustrations further on in this chapter and in the second chapter. For now it is necessary to observe that the only way to be a part of the democratic system in Bosnia-Herzegovina is to identify with one ethno-nationalistic identity without the option of defining oneself as multi-ethnic or part of another ethno-religious background (for example Jewish). Even when one has conformed him or herself to one ethno-nationalistic identity, the political options after this conformation still remain limited. Most of the political parties which are participating on the higher levels of politics in

Bosnia-Herzegovina are connected to a strong nationalistic ideology, and are in any case only a part of one-third of the representation of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s population. Even when they should be regarded as sincere and honest, they still wouldn’t have any chance to have a majority. However they are mostly regarded as nepotistic, patriarchal and corrupt, a point I will elaborate later. First I will show what the outcomes of the constitutional division are for people who do not identify with (one of) the three constitutive peoples.

Identification and nationalism

This situation is highly unwished for by nearly all my interlocutors, and sometimes described with anger, sarcasm and repulsion. Conspiracy theories are a daily topic and widely adhered to. Jokes about politics and the situation in the country served as a way to express anger towards the situation, and on the other hand to keep some looseness in the conversations. The motto better laugh than cry is lived on the one hand, but on the other hand the vividness of the discussions and the amount of time spent on talking about these phenomAyla by my interlocutors shows how seriously their lives are influenced by these ethno-nationalistic discourses and by the political situation which seems to be its outcome.

This fragment of an interview I had in the university canteen with Merima tells nearly everything about the situation young adults in Sarajevo are in. Their frustrations of being stuck in a nation where the economy is bad and the political situation – in their opinions – is even worse, were

7 _{See appendix 4 of the Dayton Agreements, containing the emergency constitution which is still in use today:}

the first things to come out in every single interview, but also in every conversation about news, politics or history in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

M. “Well, what do you know about the political situation in this country?” C. “I know something about that, but not everything.”

M. “Okay, so in this country, you’ve got three groups {draws three circles}, you’ve got Bosniacs, Serbs and Croats, and they can all elect their own president. And I {draws a huge oval next to the circles}, as so many people in Bosnia, am here. I can’t be president. I am not represented by anybody, but still have to live with the shit they created.”

C. “What shit?”

M. “Everything. I have no chances here, there’s no jobs, no money, no peace. And everything they {points with her pen in the three circles} worry about is their own fucking money and jobs.”

The frustrations displayed in this interview are based upon a widely shared sense of not being able to participate in the politics and economy, while still being a part of the nation. My informants often displayed how they felt powerless in a situation where they couldn’t make any economic or political contribution to the nation, and most of them described the nation as occupied or stolen from them.

The problem might be in what Golubović describes as “identity crisis” (2011: 28). Golubović differentiates between two forms of identity: national identity and civic identity. National identity serves as a more traditional framework of belonging to a nation and the identity markers derived from that belonging, while civic identity is a form of identity in which one Hanapts to the existing society and identifies with the social networks he or she is in. The main difference lies in that civic identity is more dynamic, while national identity, mainly based upon a nationalistic narrative combined with an image of a traditional way of living, is a very static framework of identification. When both frameworks of identification are possible and a person needs to Hanapt to one or the other in different social situations, there is the possibility that these frameworks become

contradictory and the person (or society) feels a crisis in identification (Golubović 2011: 27-28; 33-35).

This is what is constantly happening to many of my interlocutors. They explain that they are searching for a way to belong to the Bosnian society described by them as tolerant and multi-cultural. However they can only belong to the nation when they Hanapt to a dynamic, tolerant identity (a civic form of identity) in certain settings. Additionally, in other settings (like politics), they

must Hanapt to an ethno-nationalistic identity, which is a national form of identity. This means that if they want to belong fully to society they have to Hanapt to conflicting identities with conflicting values, as the civic one is tolerant and multi-cultural while the nationalistic identities are intolerant and ethno-nationalistically exclusive.

My interlocutors claim to experience this all the time in Sarajevo. On the one hand they try to live a life in which differences of ethno-religious background, family and class do not matter, while on the other hand the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina makes these differences a key factor in society, and therefore recreates the division of society constantly. If one decides to opt out of this division, it is no longer possible to participate in political life and therefore one is unable to fully belong to the nation.

So the main problem for my interlocutors lies in the inability to belong to the Bosnian society because of the refusal to identify with nationalism and the exclusion of other people who don’t belong to the same nationalistic category. They see the urge to identify with a form of nationalism as a central part of the Bosnian society, while they would rather identify with ideas of being a multi-ethnic tolerant society in which your ethno-religious background does not matter. Later on in this thesis I will show how this is connected to a form of Yugo-nostalgia and how they try to implement these ideas into their lives.

This inability to fully belong to Bosnian society is also what my informants like Merima and Dino saw as the problem and described as the main reason for their hatred towards nationalism. According to them, the nationalism connected to the three constitutive people is created in order to keep society divided, and to make sure that the focus is turned away from political crimes like corruption, nepotism and fraud. The last part is so deeply felt that some of them thought that the only difference between Bosnian politics and the mob was that the mob was open about being criminal. Most of my interlocutors shared this opinion about the connection between the nationalistic rhetoric in politics and problems like corruption, nepotism and patronage.

In the next paragraph I will explore these conspiracy theories in depth and show what commonalities they shared. I will introduce some persons of the network more in depth and describe the ways in which these theories were discussed, and the anger connected to it.

Ethno-nationalistic politics and theories on corruption

According to my informants, corruption makes up another problem in Bosnian politics, besides the division along ethno-nationalistic lines. Among them the opinion that politics is full of corruption are

because they are part of certain networks, and know other politicians via family or business. Part of their conversations on politics are a vast amount of conspiracy theories on how certain politicians made pacts together to maintain the status quo in order to enrich themselves. In many cases, according to my informants, the politicians display the corruption openly and would seem to be proud of it.

Part of these conspiracy theories build upon my argument that during the war some people gained political power through systems of patronage. Many of my informants hinted at these patronage systems and had theories of how these run through businesses, institutions and organisations, and how they play a part in filling political positions within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Corruption, according to these theories, would be accepted because of these patronage systems. Through these systems, new politicians who entered new positions would be absorbed into corruption as soon as possible, to ensure that they wouldn’t act against corruption because they themselves would have dirty hands. I can’t make any claim over the truth and validity of these theories, but I will explore their function in the aversion of nationalism and the creation of alternative discourses.

Within the network I described in my introduction these theories served as binding stories and came up whenever the conversation shifted to politics. Although I have considered if my

appearance and project has been the cause of this subject coming up several times a day, there were other factors which I believe to play a role in this. The people in the group had many commonalities in which they identified among one-another. Key to this identification was that all its members strongly rejected and contested the ethno-nationalistic identities within the Bosnian society.

One commonality most of the members had is that they have been living outside of the country for a longer time. The civil war in the country made their families leave when they all were still children, and through this temporal status of being a refugee, and in some cases later part of the diaspora, ideas on nationalism became highly contested, discussed and sometimes hated in this group. Some of its members had to deal with seriously traumatized family members (parents, older siblings, grandparents etc.) which marked their visions upon Bosnian nationhood, especially on the subdivision of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina into three constitutive peoples and the connected discourses on ethno-nationalistic identities.

A second commonality is strongly related to the above, and lies in a similar opinion concerning nationalism. Although to some persons the aversion to these nationalistic discourses is more stringent and active than to others, this commonality leads to a constant awarAmers of nationalistic or religious expressions, and caused many discussions on the topic. This aversion not

only caused opposition to those ideas, but it generated theories in which the ethno-nationalistic discourses are seen as a creation by an economic and political elite, in order to retain in their

powerful positions. The line of thought is – briefly summarized – that in order to keep the mass away from looking at corruption and nepotism in the national politics and main corporations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a conflict must be created and nationalism is used to mobilize people against each other instead of united against corruption and nepotism. On a more macro-scale it is believed that nationalism is used by international powers and corporations to get money and resources out of the country.

Dino in particular displayed a lot of anger and sarcasm when the subject of nationalism or corruption was touched upon. When I was having coffee with him and Elmin he was in a heated discussion with Vina, who complained about Dino’s openness to tourists about the corruption.

D: “Why should you not tell people, I mean, the politicians are even fucking proud of it. They are bragging on live television about how they did it.”

V: But how do you think people see us? They already think the Balkans is a violent shithole and then you tell them about these things when they are just sitting down.

D: But people need to know, I mean, they all have these tours in which they hear that we are so tolerant and that the mosque is next to the synagogue and all this nonsense, approved by our government, but the same government causes you to work for a shitty wage because otherwise you can’t even survive. And then those guys are openly bragging about how creative they are in getting what they want by corruption”

C: What do you mean?

D: Well, just the other day, there was this prime minister of the Federation on television, and they asked him about the new house he builds. They said, there was no permit, isn’t this illegal? And the guy just laughed and said that there was already a stable, and that he just used the material from that stable to make some adjustments.

C But he didn’t?

D: The stable was 9 square meter, the house was 100 by 30 meters, with 3 floors. But it was illegal, and the guy just smiled when they asked him why there was no permit, with this look how powerful I am kind of face.

D Because people are afraid of other people, and these guys say that they will protect them. In his case he is a Muslim, and he tells Muslims that he will protect them from these

‘aggressive Serbs’. But they all have a deal, Muslims, Serbs, Croats, all these politicians just made a deal that they will act like they hate each other, and then behind the screens they laugh while they divide the money amongst each other.

These sort of theories come in huge varieties, but at their core they all deal with politicians creating and maintaining the ethno-nationalistic discourse to distract voters’ attention from the corruption and to secure their political position, saving themselves from prosecution while doing so. These theories have several assumptions in common. Firstly they assume that every politician or powerful person in Bosnia-Herzegovina is corrupt. Second, though strongly connected, they have gained their position through a system of nepotism8 and patronage which rose in the war, but is targeted now to keep the power and wealth in the hands of a small elite. Thirdly, this elite have gained their positions through criminality and corruption during or very shortly after the war, and maintains its position to prevent being trialed in court. Fourth, this elite is not separated by ethno-nationalistic lines, but only pretends to be. In cases of crime and corruption it is not important if your partner in crime either belongs to your ethno-nationalistic category or to another, as long as they co-operate in maintaining the status quo. Lastly, this maintAylance of the status quo and their positions is done by propagating ethno-nationalistic identification, hatred towards other groups and fear of ethno-nationalistic conflicts, causing the population to believe in protection and patronage from the – in their views ethno-nationalistically divided – persons within the elite.

Protests against the political elite

So what makes young adults so fond to resist the ethno-nationalistic discourses, and makes this opposition such a main factor in their social lives? Considering that these matters were discussed constantly it has appeared to me that probably my own presence formed a cause for the dominance of these matters as a subject of conversation. Vina however told me that this was not the case, and that these matters really lived among Bosnian young adults, particularly since the protests going through Sarajevo in July 2013 and February 2014, which ended with setting fire to the presidential palace.

8 _{In the smallest sense nepotism means a system in which close relatives hand powerful positions to one}

“…after the fire stopped, it was a chaos for 3 or 5 days. And after that they were really protesting in front of the BBI-centar.9 Then they were threatened away, but it went underground and people were really talking about it.”

So after these protests the conversations went on, although the government tried to silence these sounds. The protest had different causes, but the origins were the same. The protest in the summer of 2013 broke out after a baby died, because she couldn’t get the right travel documents to get appropriate medical treatment in Belgrade due to a new law ordering new ID-numbers

containing the ethnicity of the holder. This law, which needed to replace an old law declared unconstitutional by the Bosnian supreme court, was refused in parliament because of a conflict between the Bosnian-Serbian nationalists on the one side and the Bosniac and Croat nationalists on the other side, causing the civil administration not to be able to hand out new ID-numbers.10, 11 In Sarajevo some 4000 citizens took the streets and blocked the parliament stressing the message to politics to “…stop arguing and start doing something”.12

However the anger and frustrations remained alive, and came to a full exposure when, in February 2014, Bosnians took the streets again in what started as protests against privatization of factories in Tuzla. These protests ended in the military police cleaning the streets after some governmental buildings were burned down. Among my interlocutors the anger concerning the ways the protests were ended is still alive and surfaces when talking about attempts to change this system. In an interview I had with Dino and his brother Elmin they were still angry about the way things were ended, and the supposed manipulation of the media by the political elite:

D. “At the beginning of the riots, everyone was supporting it, all the media were writing like ‘okay, it’s enough, we understand the people, you know…, it’s time for those three guys to start working, and it’s time that something changes in this country, it’s time for change, it’s time for improvement, it’s time for joining the European Union so we can finally like, eeh, start living’ (C ”mmm”)… and then suddenly someone starts like, eeh… throwing Moletov-Cocktails, how they arrived there, there are many speculations, how those arrived there, I mean, it’s full of police… why didn’t the policemen stop them, what happened, who brought

9 _{A famous shopping mall in Sarajevo. Centar is the Bosnian name for centre.} 10 https://fbieber.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/is-change-coming-to-bosnia-reflections-on-protests-their-prospects/ visited 14-05-2015 16:28; 11_{http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/bosnian-parliament-blockaded-id-protest visited} 14-05-2015 16:35; 12

them in, and and and…. It doesn’t matter. But than, from that moment, when the building started burning, every media used the same nine or ten words, I mean, manipulation” C “Which ones?”

D. “‘Hooligans, junkies’ eeh, eeh…” E. “Terrorists”

D. “Terrorists, eeh whatsoever a couple of words, you can see it. And then every single media started using them, and then it didn’t work, then they started ‘oh, police confiscated 9 kg of eeh… of speed. So they were obviously trying to frame legitimate protests as riots caused by some outcasts. You saw it then, that the media is controlled by these fuckers, and they aren’t impressed by any form of demonstration.

Out of the examples I gave in this paragraph one can conclude that within the group of youngsters a connection was made between nationalistic discourses, corruption and problems within the Bosnian society. They connected the high unemployment numbers, lack of foreign investments, low wages, bad infrastructure and lack of opportunities to build a future back to the nationalistic discourses and the supposed corrupt political system. Basically this is the main reason why they rejected any form of nationalism, and tried not to be part of what Elmin called any “herd of sheep, who blindly all

together are following a wolf while hating other herds following another wolf.”

Post-war society in Sarajevo

To conclude this chapter it is important to highlight certain points. First of all, it is crucial to see Bosnia-Herzegovina as a country which came out of Yugoslavia while that country was rapidly changing, and that nationalistic ideas re-emerged as a form of resistance to economic changes. The idea of one common Yugoslavian identity was dissolved and replaced by nationalistic identities connected to the Socialist republics within Yugoslavia. In Bosnia-Herzegovina this only happened just before the war, because ethno-religious backgrounds were regarded less important than unity. However during the war, when identification with a group could mean the difference between life and death, ethno-nationalism became a dominant category of identification and systems of

patronage that emerged on the basis of these ideas reinforced this ethno-nationalistic identification. After the war ended the division of society in three constitutive peoples was fixed in the constitution and served as a basis of the democratic structure of Bosnian politics. This ensured on the