International Peacebuilding and the Politics of Identity: Lessons from Social Psychology using the Bosnian Case

Abstract

This article argues that international peacebuilding efforts must be understood as identity-building projects and applies what we know from social psychology about identity processes to post-conflict peacebuilding. It argues that international peacebuilders must pay careful attention to the relationship between the multiple sources of identity from which individuals draw their self-concepts, such as their ethno-national belonging and their citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from field research on international interventions in post-conflict education reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the decade following Dayton, the article contends that the international community's efforts on the ground entrenched ethno-national group boundaries while simultaneously challenging the distinctiveness of these ethno-national identities. As a result, rather than being sites of peacebuilding, the schools of Bosnia-Herzegovina became sites of heightened tensions and controversy.

Keywords:

• peacebuilding
• Bosnia-Herzegovina
• education
• social identity theory
• national identity

Acknowledgements

I thank Dino Abazović, Sanja Alajbegović, Naazneen Barma, Ben Bowyer, Jane Curry, Danijela Dudley, Steve Fish, Stephanie Goodman, Sarah Freedman, Taeku Lee, Bronwyn Leebaw, Ana Rozić, Laura Stoker, Safia Swimelar, three anonymous reviewers, and the editors for their substantive contributions to the article. I am also indebted to Sarah Freedman, Eric Stover, and Harvey Weinstein for granting use of data from the Communities in Crisis project, which was funded by the Hewlett and MacArthur Foundations. Institutional and financial support was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, the University of California at Berkeley, and Santa Clara University.

Notes on Contributor

Naomi Levy is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University and specializes in identity politics with a focus on post-conflict societies. She is currently working on a new research project that examines public service provision as peacebuilding in Cambodia, Laos and Uganda.

Notes

1 To get a sense of the symbolism associated with the stari most, one need only look to the front pages of Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy, which she dedicated ‘to the rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge and what it represented, and to the people who have to do it’ (Woodward 1995, xiii).

2 These are the Ministry in the Republika Srpska; the Federal Ministry, ten cantonal ministries, and one minister for the Brcko district.

3 While Bosnian-speakers, Croatian-speakers and Serbian-speakers frequently converse without any difficulty, language is often used as a way to mark oneself and to determine the ethno-national membership of one's interlocutors. Thus, seemingly minor linguistic differences in written form, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar can take on much greater significance. For example, one of my Bosniak research assistants recounted an uncomfortable experience when she attempted to order coffee on the ‘wrong’ side of town. When she asked for kahva (Bosnian), the waiter informed her that they only serve kava (Croatian).

4 By July 2002 OSCE assumed a coordinating role in education reform in B-H.

5 Implementation of the Agreement of 19 July 1999 on Removal of Objectionable Material from Textbooks to be used in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1999–2000 School Year. Accessed June 14, 2013. http://www.ffzg.unizg.hr/seetn/states/bih/textbook_revision_process.htm.

6 Some parents of minority students made the choice to send their children to the other groups’ schools.

7 In RS, there are none of these divided schools. Instead, all schools employ the Serb curriculum, with returnees entitled only to extracurricular education in the national group of subjects.

8 The term ‘gymnasium’ is used in the region to refer to an academically oriented secondary school. The other main form of secondary school is vocational schools, where students can specialize in anything from medicine to hairstyling to electrical engineering.

9 An officer of OSCE's Mostar region field office provided me with a copy of a document containing all these comments, but specifically asked that I not quote from it in any publication.

10 While it is true that there has been an effort to demonstrate sensitivity to these sorts of identity concerns, with all official communication carefully provided in each of the local languages, the international community's espousals of language recognition and respect for all groups rings hollow when their efforts to bring about classroom-level integration constitute a denial of linguistic distinctiveness.