Remaking Sarajevo: Bosnian nationalism after the Dayton Accord

The task of rebuilding a city after war-time destruction can take many forms. In addition to the obvious signs of refurbishment and new buildings, there are more subtle forms of renewal involving a re-creation of the city’s identity and changes to its inhabitants’ views of the world. For Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the cessation of the struggle for control of the city, involving various ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia, has brought about several forms of renewal, many of which have been closely related to the altered political status of Bosnia. This paper investigates ways in which the changing face of Sarajevo is associated with attempts to establish the state of Bosnia and Hercegovina subsequent to the signing of the Dayton Accord that guaranteed some measure of security to Sarajevo and to Bosnia itself. In particular, manifestations of a growing Bosnian nationalism are analysed in the context of the new state’s attempts to establish a clear identity within the deeply disturbed geopolitical setting of the former Yugoslavia. Special attention is given to the renaming of many streets within Sarajevo and to the symbolism on the newly-issued banknotes. Consideration is given to theories of nationalism and to the manifestations of nationalism in the specific context of the former Yugoslavia. There is particular focus upon the position of the Bosnian Muslims in the newly-established state and the emergence of a Bosnian nationalist agenda.     

The state as a symbol or a means to an end: internal border changes in multinational federations

Federalism is an important institutional option for the management of difference in multinational states. A number of scholars have argued that the internal boundaries of such states should divide each constituent group into several federal units. In theory, boundary engineering of this type should activate cross‐cutting cleavages, subvert secessionist movements and, ultimately, foster political integration and stability. This article, by contrast, demonstrates the conditions under which the subdivision of territorial units can destabilise polities. Where statehood is a central symbol in nationalist narratives of constituent groups, the fragmentation of the sub‐state unit will be perceived as a threat to national identity of the group in question. The article compares former Yugoslavia and Nigeria, two cases in which such processes led to divergent outcomes.     

Nationalist geographies in interwar Yugoslavia: manoeuvring between national and transnational spaces

Taking into consideration several seemingly contradictory characteristics of Yugoslav geography, this article examines the employment of transnational spaces by the competing nationalist geographical narratives in interwar Yugoslavia. Though preoccupied with Yugoslavia and its political crises, at the beginning and the end of the interwar period Yugoslav geographers were concerned with international political developments, especially in East Central Europe. There were tensions between a geographical region and a national space as a preferred framework of research as well as between the belief that the political, economic and cultural development of Yugoslavia was unique and that it was comparable to development of other parts of East Central Europe. The determinist understanding of the nation as shaped by the physical landscape emphasized not only the ability, but also the necessity, of nationalist geographies to function on multiple spatial levels. Yugoslav geographers used the conceptual apparatus developed by French and German geographical traditions to establish a comparative framework in which they elaborated on various geographical characteristics of Yugoslavia, especially those politically significant, by referring to other European countries because it seemed difficult to describe the new country in terms of itself. German Geopolitik became particularly influential and, although taking different stands on it, several Yugoslav geographers pointed to geopolitical similarities with Czechoslovakia and Poland to draw conclusions regarding Yugoslavia. But geographical comparison had ambiguous implications, as it was used both to fortify and challenge the interwar Yugoslav state.     

Nationhood,Communism and State Legitimation

Abstract. Four states have disappeared as a result of the collapse of communism and many others have come into being. I want to look at the reason why these states have disappeared, what this says about the nature of state-sustaining ideologies and what the disappearance tells us about the relationship between statehood and nationhood. I will also look at the effectiveness of communism as a state-sustaining ideology. The four are, obviously, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. In each case, the survival of the state was linked to communism and the end of communism brought their continued existence into jeopardy. I shall not be looking at the Soviet Union in detail. Broadly, the construction of political identities can come about in two ways – by ethnicity or by the state. Each gives rise to a different set of loyalties, creates its own panoply of rituals etc. When the two coincide, the mythical nation-state can be said to be in being, but this hardly exists in reality (Iceland may be the sole exception in Europe).     

Bosnia: The Crime of Appeasement

Few international journalists have been as intimately involved in the conflict in former Yugoslavia as Ed Vulliamy. In this vivid personal account of the war years he argues that the international community's response to Serbian claims amounted to nothing less than appeasement.     

中国与南斯拉夫建交始末

南斯拉夫是最早承认新中国的国家之一,但中南两国的建交却拖延了五年才得以实现。苏联与南斯拉夫关系的变化是中南建交延搁和实现的主要原因。建国初期,尽管南斯拉夫符合新中国的建交原则,但中国不得不首先考虑苏联的立场和中苏同盟的利益。随着苏南双方外交关系的恢复以及南斯拉夫与东欧国家关系的改善,中南才最终得以建交。     

Labour Migration, Neoliberalism and Ethno-politics in the New Europe: The Latvian Case

Abstract:  The accession of the new European Union (EU) member states of Eastern Europe has highlighted ambivalence towards migration within the older member states. That same ambivalence has been less frequently discussed in the new. The former Soviet republic of Latvia serves as a case study of a new member state facing intensified pressure to accept inward migration to meet labour shortages, in part, a consequence of EU accession. Confounding appropriate political and policy responses is the sensitive issue of "ethnic balance", a troubled "legacy" of Latvian history. This has been characterised as comprising a "regime of discrimination" against the Russian-speaking minority. In the context of changes in the global migratory landscape, the potential for a renewed of regime of discrimination is emerging, based on an ethno-politics that has wider European resonance.     

A Sympathetic Appraisal of Cold War Modernization Theory

The apparent failure of recent US nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has re-awakened interest in earlier American efforts at nation-building and the scholarly literature that provided the intellectual framework and justification for those efforts. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a generation of scholars, shaped by their wartime experience, contributed to that literature under the general label of modernization theory. Modernization theory was promulgated under the auspices of three major institutions: Harvard's Department of Social Relations, the Social Science Research Council's Committee on Comparative Politics and MIT's Center for International Studies. All three institutions provided homes for scholars conducting multidisciplinary research on conditions in the ‘new states’ – that is the former colonial countries. Drawing on the work of key scholars that contributed to modernization theory, this article offers a more sympathetic analysis than is typical of many contemporary assessments of the theory. In order to provide that sympathetic appraisal, the widest perspective on the various approaches to modernization theory is required so that the scholars whose work are highlighted include: Gabriel Almond, Lucian Pye, Karl W. Deutsch, Daniel Lerner, Alex Inkeles and Walt Rostow.     

The Creation and Dissolution of the Multinational State: The Case of Yugoslavia

Abstract. The article draws on Randall Collins' interpretation of a Weberian sociology of legitimacy and the importance of geostrategy in explaining the contrasts between the creation and dissolution of Yugoslavia. The creation of Yugoslavia is interpreted as the outcome of the expansionist policy of the Serbian elite which was justified by the inclusion of all the ethnic Serbs into one state and made possible by the geostrategically weak positions of the Croatian and Slovenian elites. Different starting positions and motivations for unification led to a struggle among elites over the definition of the newly united state, particularly over the centralization–federalisation issue. The situation of communist Yugoslavia was a different one – the country was balancing between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. This balance – which, along with the memories of the ‘liberation struggle’, was the main source of the legitimacy of the regime – was destroyed with the cessation of the cold war. The newly created situation had two important results. First, the potential threat from the communist east had disappeared. Second, Slovenia and Croatia were attracted to the idea of integration into western Europe. This situation was substantially different than in the period of the creation of the Yugoslav state, in which western Europe was perceived as a potential threat to the existence of Croatia and Slovenia. Now, the perception of threat came from the east – from the ‘unreformed’ Serbia. The attraction to the west was much weaker in Serbia, where the old communist power structure stayed intact. The new situation, and the political elites' perception of it, created the tension which finally destroyed the basis of the multinational state.     

The Outbreak of Nationalism on Former Yugoslav Territory: A Historical Perspective on the Problem of Supranational Identity

Abstract. In the text some questions about the genesis of radical nationalism on the former Yugoslav territory are discussed. The author's main thesis is that what happened during the outburst of nationalism was an alteration in the status of national identification, particularly in its relation to ‘supranational’ Yugoslav identification; that is, the eruption of radical nationalism was the result of reorganisation within an identification matrix. This thesis is first clarified by a short historical survey of the status of national identification before the outburst of nationalism, and secondly by an analysis of the main changes in the identification matrix during the outbreak of nationalism. Additionally, some of the main characteristics of political socialisation in the Yugoslav socialist state (especially the function of the value ‘brotherhood and unity’), as well as the possibility for future non-conflictual relations between the nations of former socialist Yugoslavia are discussed.     

The State of the Study of the State in Anthropology

Much has been published theorizing the origins of states, but ethnography has lagged behind in developing the conceptual tools to theorize the state, generally preferring to study the margins of states or “stateless” societies, even though they were enmeshed in or colonized by states. In recent decades states seem to have been bypassed by an interest in global and transnational phenomena that presumes states as political organizations to be increasingly irrelevant. This review examines three texts that cut across archaeological and socio-cultural anthropology to analyze contemporary research on states and propose new directions in the study of states.     

Communists on the Brink: The Gorizian Comrades of the Early Post-War Period

Much is known about the early post-war history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). However, considerably less attention has been directed to its later affiliations; those in regions at the time contested in terms of their national sovereignty and which were consequently integrated to the PCI national party structure at different stages over the course of the late 1940s and 1950s. They include the communist organisations in the former Venezia-Giulia region or the Julian March, on Italy's north-eastern border with Yugoslavia. Drawing on new empirical evidence, this paper looks at the singularly pragmatic nature of the contemporary communist movement in the Gorizian Province, as illustrated in its responses to a series of testing situations and paradigm-shifting developments. It examines these comrades' trajectory from revolutionary pro-secessionists intent on annexing their region to the new People's Republic of Yugoslavia, to ‘Italian’ communists' intent on superseding the majority Christian Democrats in the immediate context. Themes addressed in this analysis include those of agency, geopolitics, political and national identity.     

European Union at the Crossroads: A Framing Comment

In a framing comment embracing the preceding four papers devoted to the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, a prominent American geographer reviews some of the major problems confronting the European continent. The paper, which begins with the author's view of Europe's dilemma in late 2006, covers a number of geographic implications of the May 2004 expansion. Noted are Russia's overland access to Kaliningrad, the addition of ca. 8 million underprivileged Roma (presently the Union's largest minority population), the potentially divisive new boundary with Russia, the future candidate states emerging from the former Yugoslavia, the prospects of Ukraine's possible membership, and the challenge of Turkey's quest for admission to the EU. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F02, F20, P20. 2 figures, 34 references.     

Neither Cyclops nor Sophist: Christian Formation Against the State

Abstract

This article identifies a deep paradox at the heart of the modern state—in its ability and professed purposes to form the moral characters of its citizens—and then offers a Christian response. Were it not for the manifest success of states in persisting in this paradox, it would delegitimize them on grounds of incoherence and duplicity. In an argument that is occasionally Aristotelian, the article shows how modern (secular, liberal) states morally form citizens who willingly submit to the state's formation on grounds that the state has legitimacy so long as it does not claim moral authority. This line of reasoning is explicated with reference to Sheldon Wolin on Alexander Hamilton and feudalism as well as Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle. In response, Christian freedom, ecclesial peoplehood, and poverty not only run counter to state formation but positively resist it.     

‘Connor's communist control polities’: why ethno‐federalism does not explain the break‐up of the Soviet Union,Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia

When the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke apart, several prominent academics argued that this was because they were federations (or ‘ethno‐federations’ as they put it). This article uses Walker Connor's magnum opus on Marxist–Leninist strategy and practice in communist states to show the flaws in these analyses. Connor's work shows that it is more plausible to link the fate of the three communist states to their anti‐federalist practices than to the fact that they were formally federal.     

State power beyond the `territorial trap': the internationalization of the state

In recent years, neo-liberal and neo-Weberian scholars have waged fierce debates over whether or not the capacity of the nation-states to manage economic activity has been weakened by globalization. While siding with the neo-Weberians in their assertion that states retain substantial powers, this paper argues that both neo-liberals and neo-Weberians share a problematic assumption that states are anchored exclusively in the social forces deemed to lie within their national territories. By contrast, it is argued here that capitalist development has tended to promote internationalization of capital, and with this the internationalization of the state. A theoretical approach to internationalization of the state is then outlined, showing how specific factions of capitalist classes can end up sharing concrete interests in specific state policies across national boundaries. The potential for transnational coalitions among various fractions of capital, it is argued, has helped create the current hegemony of neo-liberal approaches among many Third World state officials. Internationalization of the state thus suggests a need to rethink both the bases of Northeast and Southeast Asian economic growth and the nature of the current crisis afflicting countries in those regions. It may prove to be the case that the states which played important roles in Asian industrial development did so less as national entities than as actors within an internationalized system of class and inter-state relations which resulted from historical opportunities no longer available to most developing countries.     

中世纪西欧教会法对教会与国家关系的理解和规范

本文依据中世纪西欧《教会法大全》讨论当时教会与国家的关系。中世纪的教会法学家和教皇们有一种二元论的政治理论 ,认为世俗政权和以教皇为首的教会领导机构应该有各自不同的势力范围 ,前者负责国家的治理 ,后者负责宗教事务。他们以为这一理论有利于教会和国家保持良好的合作关系。为了划分清楚教会和国家的权威范围 ,教会法学家把教会法界定为独立的法律体系。在复杂的现实政治中 ,对世俗权力和宗教权力做这种区分是极为困难的。     

Moments of Proximity: Former Political Prisoners,Postmemory and Justice in Indonesia

This article builds upon recent anthropological engagements with postconflict transitional justice processes, suggesting that ethnography can illuminate the ways in which these processes involve the negotiation of both physical and symbolic space, and intergenerational, postmemorial identities and relationships. This is demonstrated through my fieldwork observations of a 2005 class action lawsuit filed by eks-tapol (former political prisoners) in Indonesia against current and former heads of state. Tracing the symbolic resonances and the sometimes confrontational relationships brought into play around the court case, the article examines how a significant aspect of the ways in which victims of state violence situate themselves after the violence has ceased involves locating themselves, other citizens and state actors in intergenerational relationships.