Patrons, clients, and friends : the role of Bosnian ulama in the rebuilding of trust and coexistence in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Cetin, O.
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Cetin, O. (2011, September 21). Patrons, clients, and friends : the role of Bosnian ulama in the rebuilding of trust and coexistence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Retrieved from
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25 CHAPTER I
Situating the idea of trust-building within the broader process of reconciliation
Introduction
Scholarly interest on trust draws upon the pioneering discussions of Georg Simmel (1900, 1908), who considered trust as a key component in the functioning of a society. In his qualitatively intense emphasis on trust,13 Simmel emphasized that trusting the other is central to the consolidation of society. (1990 [1900], p. 178) This approach on trust, based on the integrated duality of knowledge and ignorance, was followed by Luhmann (1979, p.
26). In his comprehensive analysis, second to Simmel, Luhmann considered trust as an element of modernity that reduces social complexity and uncertainty resulting from risk.
While the two works laid the foundational arguments on trust, the hiatus between the two works marks a general lack of interest in mainstream sociology following Simmel.14 Since then the subject of trust has achieved significant attention in a variety of disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. While, for instance, in Social Sciences and Arts &
Humanities Citation Indexes for the years 1945-1988, there were 1,895 publications focusing on trust, this number grew to 14,437 between 1989 and 2009.15
This chapter does not aim to provide a chronological history of the literature on trust.
Such comprehensive works have already been provided by others (Lewis and Weigert, 1985;
Misztal, 1996; Möllering, 2001; Silver, 1985; and Seligman, 1997). Instead, it is limited to a two-dimensional core analysis of the current debate on trust, i.e., its source and the context
13 Simmel’s approach on trust was presented in less than ten pages in his works Philosophie des Geldes (1989 [1900]) and Soziologie (1992*1908+); as cited in Möllering (2001, p. 405).
14 Simmel’s significance on the elaboration of trust was later emphasized by Luhmann (1988), Misztal (1996, pp. 49-50), and Möllering (2001).
15 Retrieved from
,http://apps.isiknowledge.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/summary.do?qid=6&product=WOS&SID=S
1113n8d567MM77kdK4&search_mode=GeneralSearch and
http://apps.isiknowledge.com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2048/summary.do?qid=5&product=WOS&SID=S1 113n8d567MM77kdK4&search_mode=GeneralSearch
26
in which the relationship is realized. This provides the foundation for an elaboration of a social-psychological approach to trust within the framework of a post-war society.
Recent researches on inter-communal relations in Bosnia have pointed out a significant level of generalized distrust (see, Håkansson and Hargareaves, 2004; Håkansson and Sjöholm, 2005; Pickering, 2006; Zaimovid and Maurer, 2007). However, they mostly represented a reductionist approach to trust by examining this notion as a characteristic of an exclusive individual choice. This led me to adopt a two-fold questioning process: Why the broken inter-communal bonds in Bosnia could not be rebuilt despite 15 years of post-war period? Is the dominant approach on trust a part of the desired solution or does it reproduce the problem by focusing on only one dimension of the problem?
Thus, from a hypothetical point of view, the main purpose of this chapter is to examine trust as a multi-faceted and relational notion constructed through social guidance. My primary argument is that religious elites in Bosnia mediate the choice and context of inter- communal relations by their traditional legitimacy in addition to their increasing role since late 1980s. Thus, we should recognize the fact that trust, represented as a key factor of social cohesion, is not simply an individual choice but constructed through social representations shaped by the discursive power of these religious elites. Understanding the instruments in which these representations are constructed would allow us to understand the context for sustainable inter-communal coexistence and collaboration.16 This will also shed light on differing mechanisms on which such relations could be based, other than trust.
1.1. A critical review: Trusting theories on trust?
Despite divergence on its source and context, trust has been emphasized as a fundamental component of a society in subsequent works following Simmel and Luhmann.
They have emphasized the extrinsic value of trust and regarded it as the key to several societal factors, including efficient democratic governance (e.g., Putnam 1993, 1995), economic prosperity (e.g., Fukuyama, 1995) and civic engagement (Uslaner, 2002). However,
16 For the inspiring discussion on my approach, see, Gillespie (2008).
27
growing interest has further complicated our understanding of trust, both on theoretical and practical levels, even though the notion itself has been described to reduce the complexity and uncertainty of the modern world (e.g., Giddens 1990, 1991; Lewis and Weigert, 1985;
Luhmann, 1979).17
Today, there are different categorizations of trust drawing on different epistemological traditions. They are mainly framed in a two-fold categorization of trust, namely the basis of trust18 and the context or level of the trusting relationships.19 This inevitably results in a situation resembling the story of six blind men, each describing the part of the elephant they touch. (McKnight and Chervany, 2001, p. 29) Such diverse theoretical elaborations of trust can be placed in a simple two-dimensional approach proposed by Markova, Linell and Gillespie (2008, p. 10) which focuses on primary (taken-for-granted) trust and reflective trust as the ideal-types of trust and micro-social and macro-social trust as the levels of relations within a trust-distrust continuum.
17 Lewis and Weigart (1985), for instance, described trust as “a functional alternative to a rational prediction for the reduction of complexity” (p. 969).
18 By considering its complexity, trust has been grounded on different bases or sources most of which represented the dichotomy of rational choice and faith in others, e.g., trust based on a rational choice (Coleman, 1990; Hardin 1991, 1993, 2004a), a calculus or deterrence-based, knowledge-based and identification-based trust (Lewicki and Bunker, 1996), strategic/particularized trust and moralistic/generalized trust (Uslaner, 1999, 2001, 2002), rational and moral trust (Volken, 2002), calculus-based/rational trust, empathy-based trust, identification-based trust, affect-and friendship- based trust, routine-based trust, and knowledge-based trust (Nooteboom, 2006). The role of institutions on forming trust has also been presented in several categorizations, such as traditional, institutional and active trust (Möllering, 2002), rational, institutional and active trust (Möllering, 2003, 2005), process-based, characteristics-based, and institutional-based trust (Zucker, 1986). See also, Ganesan and Hess (1997), Newton (2004), Offe (1999), McAllister (1985), Sako (1992), and Shapiro, Sheppard and Cheraskin (1992).
19 Among many others, for instance, trust has been conceptualized on different levels or ideal types, e.g., (inter)personal and system trust (Fox, 1974; Giddens, 1990; Luhmann, 1979; Zucker, 1986), trust in systems and trust in generalized others (Volken, 2002), particular and large system trust (Coleman, 1990), generalized, institutional, technological, organizational, commercial, positional and personal trust (Sztompka, 1996), horizontal and vertical trust (Elek and Rothstein, 2005), and particular and generalized trust (Uslaner, 2003), two-to-two vertical and horizontal trust (Offe, 1999).
Similarly, one can find different categorizations clustering the present theoretical elaborations mainly on individual, inter-personal and institutional levels. See, e.g., Lewicki and Bunker (1995), McKnight and Chervany (2001), and Worchel (1979). See, also, Eisenberg (2007), Raiser (1998), Wuthnow (1998), and Zaheer et. al (1998).
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In such a context of self-other dependence, trust simply refers to “a state involving confident positive expectations about another’s motives with respect to oneself in situations entailing risk” (Boon and Holmes, 1991, p. 194).20 This definition of trust principally entails the acceptance of vulnerability and putative a-posteriori trustworthiness of the trustee by the trustor. This is either grounded on the history of their relationship, which is assumed to provide sufficient knowledge to believe in his/her trustworthiness or a generalized faith in others (see, e.g., Giddens, 1990, 1991; Simmel, 1950 [1908], 1990 [1900]; Uslaner, 2001, 2002). Alternatively, Hardin proposes a trusting relationship to be based on “encapsulated interest,” that is perceived self-interest to sustain a social relationship. (Hardin, 2004a, 2004b)21
While drawing on different sources as the basis of trust, these hypothetical works generally present an essentialist approach by proposing an underlying essence of trust centered on the individual choice. They, however, rarely problematize “real” circumstances situated within the web of inter-personal and inter-communal relations, which are determined by not only individual, but also socio-political conditions.22 However, such cases of distrust at the broader inter-communal level are generally under the influence of several social agencies drawing on an asymmetrical power nexus between elites and ordinary people. Thus, I primarily argue that it is not simply possible to ignore or devalue the role of socially derived knowledge constructed by normative institutions such as religion or elites
“who engage in producing or reproducing ideas about whom and what can be trusted,”
named by Rothstein (2000, p. 488) as “information entrepreneurs.”
Secondly, such one-dimensional approaches proposing our knowledge of “the other” as a proper ground for trust seems to leave several questions unanswered. A primary problematic is the question of sufficient degree of past experience or knowledge to predict the behavior of “the other,” (Offe, 1999, p. 11). Here, a related question is the hidden
20 Here, a distinction is generally drawn between trust in individuals and confidence in institutions.
See, Rothstein (2005), and Watier and Marková (2004).
21 It should be noted that this is again a representation of rational choice.
22 For recent works exploring “real” cases of trust and distrust, see, Marková (Ed.) (2004), Marková and Gillespie (Ed.) (2008), and Rothstein (2005).
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motivations or intentions- of “the other” resulting in a sudden and unexpected change in his/her position. To concretize these two problematic, one may refer to several testimonies about the perplexity of the survivors of 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina23 on how their neighbors changed over a night (see, Jones, 2004; Weine, 1999). Moreover, the fact that former neighbors and friends participated in the violence challenges the very core of many theories of trust based on the idea of familiarity (e.g., Eisenberg, 2007; Lewicki and Bunker, 1996; Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Luhmann, 1988; Nooteboom, 2006; Offe, 1999;
Uslaner, 1999, 2001, 2002). 24
This question of past experience becomes more challenging when we situate the idea of trust within the dynamics of a post-war society characterized by broken inter-communal relationships. The fact that trust in “the other” has already been destroyed further challenges the credibility of such hypothetical arguments based merely on either a strategic calculation of the potential motives of “the other” or a “leap of faith” in the Simmelian sense. Here, a related, third question is whether trust is “a” or “the” crucial and imperative dimension for coexistence and cooperation in post-war contexts, especially when the suspicion on the side of the trustor is still motivated by memories of betrayal. While, for instance, Hardin’s approach seem to provide a reasonable ground for parties to sustain a collaborative relationship based on their perceived self-interest, it still cannot explain how distrust and suspicion between parties would be reduced especially in cases of “collective paranoia” between the groups.25
Thus, we should primarily ask whether and how it is possible to forget treacherous behavior to rebuild a spirit of coexistence. Here, the main difficulty is to surpass the psychological threshold drawing on the memories of the breach of past trust.26 Moreover,
23 Hereinafter called Bosnia.
24 These people were supposed to embrace the Yugoslav civil religion of brotherhood and unity.
25 For a comprehensive analysis of “collective paranoia,” see Kramer (2004).
26 In his analysis linking memory, rationality and social traps, Rothstein (2005) for instance, emphasizes the difficulty of to recover trust once it is lost. Moreover, he refers to psychological research on memory and underlines that “the more one tries to forget traumatic experiences … the more vivid they become” (pp. 13-18).
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the pressing emphasis on the unsubstitutability of trust27 can also be a subsequent psychological threshold for the victim as it would refresh the traumatic experiences.
Regarding that paramount necessity attributed to trust, it should be noted that in some recent works, trust has started to be questioned within the framework of the possibility of cooperation in case of lack of trust (see, Cook, Hardin and Levi, 2005; Raymond, 2006; Ward, O’Loughlin, Bakke, & Cao, 2006).
Drawing on the aforementioned hypothetical arguments and my reservations for their applicability, I argue that a continuum of trust-building choices drawing on a conceptualization of trust as the result of individual rational choice or a faith in generalized others does not explain the heterogeneous and contextual characteristics of trust.28 As an attempt to deessentialize such abstract conceptualizations of trust, I adapt the idea of trust as a “social practice” discursively shaped in particular cultural contexts through the mediation of social representations. (Gillespie, 2008, p. 123; Jovchelovitch, 2008, p. 118).
Moreover, I propose to include the dimension of self-perception to broaden our understanding of the subject. Here, a relatively stable self-concept of the trustor omits the crucial aspect of change.29 The inclusion of change would thus provide greater explanatory power to our approach to the problem of trust. It would particularly highlight how the self is deconstructed following such a striking change transforming the image of a friend suddenly to an enemy. This would provide us a more plausible explanation to his possible choice, the meaning attributed to their relationship and the context within which the relations could be
27 This is generally emphasized by the representatives of the international community acting as the facilitating peacebuilding agencies.
28 For an elaboration of trust within everyday, context-bound interaction, see Gillespie (2008, pp.
121-127).
29 Here, I use the term “self-concept” to refer to “the totality of the individual’s thoughts and feelings with reference to self as an object,” as defined by Rosenberg (1979, p. ix), which is both a social product and a social force. See, Kaplan (1986) and Rosenberg (1981). For the literature on the role of self-concept on inter-group relations and group processes, see, e.g., Turner and Onorato (1999).
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realized.30 It would also clarify our problematic of questioning and situating the idea of trust and coexistence within the broader framework of post-war reconciliation.
In the next part, I will maintain a social-psychological approach to trust. This would particularly allow us to clarify inter-communal perceptions shaped in between individual cognition and the influence of collective self.
1.2. A social-psychological approach toward trust
Social representations theory can principally provide us with the relevant strategies to examine the idea of trust and its rebuilding through a holistic approach in relation to socio- political and cultural maps of meaning.
Serge Moscovici first introduced the concept of social representations in his seminal work on social knowledge, La Psychanalyse, son image at eon public (1961). He borrowed Durkheim`s concept of collective representations (1898) as the starting point for his theoretical elaborations on social representations. He focused mainly on the relationship between cultural intersubjectivity and the psychological organization of knowledge.
Moscovici (1976) described social representation as:
… a system of values, ideas and practices with a twofold function: first to establish an order which will enable individuals to orientate themselves in their material and social world and to master it; and secondly to enable communication to take place among members of a community by providing them with a code for social exchange and a code for naming and classifying unambiguously the various aspects of their world and their individual and group history (p. xiii).
These two functions enable us to examine how the victims of the breach of trust can deconstruct the meaning that they attributed to their inter-communal relationship and the image of “the other” shaping their choice to establish enter such relationships. The elites can use social representations to explicate the perplexity of war experiences of ordinary people through the function of social representations making “something unfamiliar, or
30 This agrees with Huddy’s (2001) approach on a dynamic concept of identity by addressing the issues of identity choice, the subjective meaning of identities, change in and stability of social and political identities.
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unfamiliarity itself, familiar” (Moscovici, 2000, p. 37). This process of familiarization is based on two fundamental mechanisms of anchoring and objectifying. While anchoring ascribes meaning to something unfamiliar and introduces it into our particular categories of knowledge, objectifying concretizes an abstraction.31 In case of a sudden change in inter- communal relations resulting in the need to de-frame both the self and “the other,” social representations can provide us the space to give meaning to the previous experience, challenging it and situating “us” and “them” into the new realm of relations. Functioning as a grammar determining perceptions and subsequent behaviors, these representations enable the local elites to represent and guide the processes of change through their discursive schemes. Through the deconstruction or dismantling of particular representations, the party whose trust has been breached may be empowered to adopt the spirit of coexistence, even though it may not be possible to label the level of the relationship as trust.
These social representations inherently include the factor of power. The elites aim to achieve certain goals through adopting or altering certain strategies such as justification or blaming.32 Here by integrating discourse-historical approach to my analysis of social representations, I aim to highlight the productive capacities of discourse frames of the religious elites as a resource for further discursive strategies determining inter-communal relations. Borrowing Parker’s (1997, pp. 287-291) description of the characteristics of discourse, I particularly focus on (a) how it varies, (b) how it is constructed, and (c) how it functions to give meaning to their experiences and the images of “us” and “them.” Here, discourse-historical approach further provides us with a critical awareness on the role of power, history and ideology (De Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak, 1999, p. 156). Thus, while discourses are examined in relation to the choice of strategies, such as constructive, transformation and dismantling strategies, discursive psychological approach particularly enables us to clarify spoken discourse33. As Augoustinos (2001) depicts, it enables us to
31 Moscovici (2000) identifies objectifying as the “more active process” (pp. 41-54). Philogène and Deaux (2000) signify it as “the crystallization of the new object into a figurative core” (p. 5).
32 For these discursive strategies, see, Parker (1997, pp. 287-291), and Potter and Wetherell (1987, p. 116).
33 For discursive analysis, see, Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Wetherell and Potter (1992).
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analyze “what people are trying to do, and what effects they are trying to produce, with their talk at different times” (p. 208).
Through such an integrative approach to analyze the negotiated discursive practices, we can see that Muslim religious elites in Bosnia not only represent but also construct the attitudes, behaviors and hence collective memory of Muslim Bosniaks in general.34
Through a discursive (de)construction of the historically constituted social categories within the framework of a collective memory, the group -or the collective self- may also discursively dissociate itself from their lower status35 or loss of self-esteem. This would also facilitate to overcome the sense of perplexity or confusion in interpreting the past experiences and future prospects, which would hopefully result in a psychical empowerment to regain the ideal of coexistence.
So far I have reviewed how the problem of trust could be understood within a social- psychological dimension to fill the current gaps in the present literature, especially on rebuilding of trust following civil wars. This also requires going beyond a mere political or legal approach to reconciliation in these post-conflict contexts by focusing on the socio- psychological dimension of reconciliation.
1.3. Prospects for restoring inter-communal relations: A social-psychological approach to peacebuilding and post-war reconciliation
Introduced first by Galtung (1976) and later popularized by the-then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Boutros Gali in his report entitled An Agenda for Peace in 1992, the concept of peacebuilding has gained widespread acceptance both in academic and political circles since the early 1990s. In the 1990s alone, Paris (2004, p. 3) cites 14 major peacebuilding operations following a civil-war, namely in Nicaragua (1989), Angola (1991),
34 For the founding debate on collective memory, see Halbwachs (1992).
35 For Turner’s conceptualization of individual mobility, see Turner (1982, p. 34).
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Cambodia (1991), El Salvador (1991), Mozambique (1992), Liberia (1993), Rwanda (1993), Bosnia (1995), Croatia (1995), Guatemala (1997), East Timor (1999), and Kosovo (1999).36
In the aforementioned UN document, peacebuilding was envisioned as the fourth and the last stage of UN-conflict resolution strategy, composed of preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding. Stressing that these strategies are “integrally related,” they were defined as follows (Boutros-Ghali, 1992, p. 11, para. 20- 21):
- Preventive diplomacy is action to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur.
- Peacemaking refers to action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through such peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the Charter of the United Nations.
- Peace-keeping means the deployment of a United Nations presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all the parties concerned, normally involving United Nations military and/or police personnel and frequently civilians as well. Peace- keeping is a technique that expands the possibilities for both the prevention of conflict and the making of peace.
- Peace-building consists of action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict. 37
36 In its following pages, Paris (2004, pp. 4-5) cites three operations in the twenty-first centuries, namely Afghanistan (2002), Ivory Coast (2003) and Liberia (2003). He (2004) further states that “the most striking similarity” of the mentioned operations in 20th century was that “they all sought to transform war-shattered states into ‘liberal market democracies’ as quickly as possible” (p. 5). This has been one of the main critics to those ‘missionary’ peacebuilding operations. See, Champagne (2005).
37 Strategies and activities implied by the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding were further specified as “disarming the previously warring parties and the restoration of order, the custody and possible destruction of weapons, repatriating refugees, advisory and training support for security personnel, monitoring elections, advancing efforts to protect human rights, reforming or strengthening governmental institutions and promoting formal and informal processes of political participation.” See, Boutros-Ghali (1992, para. 55).
35
These concepts, marking an evolution from the strategy to halt ongoing violence to structural transformation of the root causes of the conflict,38 were further elaborated and developed in subsequent documents such as An Agenda for Development (1994) and UN’s Supplement to an Agenda for Peace (1995).
As laid out in the definition offered by Boutros-Ghali’s successor, Kofi Annan, the aim of these initiatives was envisioned as “(creating) the conditions necessary for a sustainable peace in war-torn societies” (Annan, 1999, para. 101; as cited in Paris, 2004, p. 2). Here, peacebuilding basically functions as a proactive mechanism to constructively transform the conflicts to achieve a sustainable peace. (See, Figure 1)39 Although one can find several categorizations of the stages of peacebuilding referring to the form or level of initiatives or the actors involved,40 they can be considered in two main mutually reinforcing sets of initiatives: a) reconstruction and b) reconciliation (Reychler, 1998).
Figure 1: Spectrum of Conflict-Handling Mechanisms;
Source: Assefa (2001, p. 33).
38 For different categorizations of post-war stages of “de-escalation,” see also, Ball (2001), Forman, Patrick, & Salomons (2000), and Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, & Miall (2005).
39 This has its roots in the distinction introduced by Galtung (1969), where peacebuilding refers to
“positive peace” (absence of structural violence), rather than a “negative peace” (absence of physical violence).
40 Llamazares (2005) argues that this broadness creates “the danger of becoming meaningless” (p.
3).
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My analysis of the Bosnian case is concerned with the second aspect (reconciliation) and focus on the relational and social-psychological dimensions. Reconciliation can simply be defined as “a process through which a society moves from a divided past to a shared future”
(Bloomfield, 2003, p. 12). While structural dimension centers on the reconstruction of political, economic and judicial infrastructure of post-war societies, relational dimension mainly focus on a two-fold process of rebuilding and rehabilitation of a war-torn society.41 By focusing on “the root causes of the conflict,” these initiatives primarily attempt to
“encourage and support interaction between all sectors of society in order to repair damaged relations and start the process of restoring dignity and trust.” (Spence, 2001, pp.
137-138)42
These processes have been realized in previous cases through several instruments to redress the past wrongdoings (Lederach, 1997, p. 31). These have been the establishment of some mechanisms of apology and forgiveness such as truth commissions,43 fact-finding missions, war crimes tribunals, problem-solving workshops, and joint projects aimed at the constructive change for a common future. However, these initiatives, aimed to overcome the destructive influence of the past, should be realized simultaneously at three levels of society, e.g., national, community and individual in order to result in a cooperative relationship.
(Lederach, p. 1997)
At the national level, this is generally realized through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, while at the community level memorials, rituals and ceremonies are generated to remember and commiserate past sufferings. At the individual level, these mechanisms aimed at generating “victim empowerment” are usually maintained through psychological counseling to nurture the lost self-esteem and trust in others. However, this inevitably has limitations, especially after prolonged and large-scale destructive conflicts (van der Merwe and Vienings 2001, pp. 343-345). Here, the converted image of the other
41 For an account of peacebuilding tools directed at different functional areas, see, Lund (2001).
42 Govier and Verwoerd (2002, p. 188) particularly identify reconciliation with rebuilding of inter- personal and inter-communal trust.
43 For a comprehensive analysis of truth and reconciliation commissions, see, Avruch and Vejarano (2001).
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and the self is crucial to foster positive attitudes and develop inter-communal awareness among the parties.44 This would also facilitate to address the fundamentals of reconciliation process specified by Kriesberg (1999, 2004): truth, justice and regard.45
The relativity of truth about the past generally justifies fear, hatred and hostility between peoples in different sides with its influence on the present. This relativity also applies to justice as parties to the conflict usually disagree about who is the wrongdoer and responsible for all that has happened. This requires us to focus on the mechanisms through which these “regimes of truth,” as coined by Foucault (1980, p. 133),46 are generated and disseminated through several instruments of mass communication, including official statements.
For this reason, in the following part, I address how critical discourse analysis would reveal these regimes of truth are constructed and manifested by the Bosnian ulama through symbols and representations used in their spoken and written discourse to shape inter- communal relations.
1.4. Symbols, representations and discursive power: Methodological framework
The IZ has been positioned as the principal religious organization of Bosnian Muslims since its establishment in 1882. Under the influence of socio-cultural and political dynamics since early 1990s it has also maintained itself as also a key national organization of Muslim Bosniaks. This study aims to discuss the IZ’s influence on inter-communal relations in general, with a particular focus on repairing the broken inter-communal relations in the post- war reconciliation context. As specified in the introduction, I focus on three main
44 For instance, Broom (1993) proposes the fostering of a “third culture” drawing on the construction of a new identity based on “relational empathy” (p. 11). For dealing with the past as a reconciliation strategy, see, for example, Theissen (2004).
45 Kriesberg identifies security as the fourth element of this process.
46 Foucault (1980) emphasizes that each society has its own “general politics” of truth. He describes these as “types of discourse which it attempts and makes it function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth;
and the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (p. 131).
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frameworks on the role of the IZ as: (a) an active peacebuilder; (b) an interpreter of current peacebuilding initiatives, and (c) determinant of Bosniak’s choices on inter-communal relations through the discursive construction of “identity frames?”
Here, critical discourse analysis can provide us the means to review the ways in which social representations are discursively shaped to construct, transform or challenge the boundaries of the self and “the other.”47 I focus on two clusters of data as my units of analysis. The first one is composed of ulama’s speeches delivered at particular religio- national commemorations (see, Introduction). The second is compiled of several official texts ranging from religious advisories and sermons to resolutions and texts for religious instruction.
With two different, though related, corpora of data, representing different modes of legitimization and delegitimization, this study is based on an integrated methodological basis drawing on discursive psychology and discourse-historical analysis. This would allow us to reconstruct the maintenance of choices to trust without restricting ourselves to the cognitive information processing at the individual level. It will particularly reveal how the knowledge related to the idea of trust is shaped under the guidance of socially-constructed “maps of meanings:” (a) whom to trust, (b) in what conditions to trust, and (c) how to create the necessary background for trust to be realized (Augoustinos, 2001, p. 216).
I analyze the negotiated discursive practices of Bosnian ulama by adopting the perspective of discursive psychology. This approach allows us to examine the forms and processes through which the Muslim ulama not only represents but also constructs attitudes, behavior and collective memory in general through rhetorical strategies such as blaming and justification.48 The unique contribution of discursive psychology is grounded in its focus on the mutual construction of identity and history or culture influencing each other
47 By referring to the previous discussion on social categorizations and social representations theory, integrating them with the perspective of discursive psychology will also help in overcoming their singly relatively limited potential to explain such complex social challenges. For a specific analysis on how an integration of the two theories could be beneficial for both, see, Breakwell (1993).
48 Parker points out three characteristics of discourse, namely variability, construction and function. See, Parker (1997, pp. 287-291). For the founding debate on collective memory, see Halbwachs (1992).
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through the use of such “interpretative repertoires” (Edley, 2001, pp. 190-191).49 Such an emphasis on discursive strategies will enable the development of a dynamic construction of social categories and meanings by the Bosnian ulama. Nevertheless, it is also important to see the wider context of power relations by focusing on the relational and hierarchical dimensions of discourse.
Here, by following critical discourse analysis (CDA), I will maintain the dynamics of inter- communal relationships entwined in between the text, speech and power (van Dijk, 1993, p.
253). Regarding the latter (power), a particular attention requires to be paid on two post-war dynamics. The first is the increasing role of Bosniaks in Bosnian-Herzegovinian public realm attempted to be legitimized in the ulama’s sequences of discourse. The second is the multi- dimensional relations of power between Muslim religious elites on the one side and local non-Muslim religious leaders alongside local politicians and representatives of the international organizations on the other side.
Based on a three-dimensional conceptual framework, e.g., power, history and ideology, CDA particularly highlights a critical awareness on “the historical dimension of discursive acts,” which is revealed in two forms:
First, discourse-historical approach attempts to integrate all available information on the historical background and the original sources in which discursive `events` are embedded.
Second, it explores the ways in which particular types and genres of discourse are subject to diachronic change (De Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak, 1999, p. 156).
Thus, I primarily give an outline of the historical background from the Austria-Hungarian era of Bosnia (1878-1918) to present post-Dayton Bosnia under the supervision of the High Representative of the international community. This will outline how the Bosnian Muslim ulama’s discourse functioned both as a resource and consequence of the aforementioned socio-political relations alongside the continuum of stability and change. A particular focus is provided on the position of the IZ towards the state, the Muslim community and fellow non- Muslims of Yugoslavia and Bosnia. Then, I particularly focus on the forms of strategies used
49 Potter and Wetherell (1987) define these “interpretative repertoires” as “recurrently used systems of terms used for characterizing and evaluating actions, event and other phenomena” (p.
149).
40
by the ulama to construct, transform or dismantle nexus of relationships between these actors.50 Here, I will examine how ulama legitimize or delegitimize and represent and misrepresent their and the other’s position to determine the course of inter-communal relations at three-levels.51 The first two (see Chapters III and IV) focus on the basic parameters of peacebuilding interpreted by the Bosnian ulama in between ideals and realities. The third level focuses on the discursive negotiation of identity under three basic frameworks: (a) constructing the idea of a common life (b) defining a common idea of Bosnianhood and Bosnia as the common homeland, and (c) constructing Muslim Bosniak self-identity.
By drawing on these theoretical and analytical approaches, the historical development of the IZ in former Yugoslavia and Bosnia, as well as its role on inter-communal relations will be examined in the following chapter.
50 Here, I borrow the categories outlined by Wodak et. al. (1999, pp. 31-35) and De Cillia, Reisigl and Wodak (1999, pp.160-166).
51 For these discursive strategies, see, Chilton (2004, pp. 45-47).
