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ABSTRACT
Face-to-face encounters are well embedded in reconciliation processes and are meant to break down stereotypes and misconceptions and to “re-humanize the Other”, facilitating a transformation that would have a “healing” effect for entire communities. Based on “face-to-face encounters” in Israel/Palestine and in the Western Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia–Herzegovina and Croatia), I demonstrate that what happens is quite the opposite. Instead of blurring ethnic/religious identities, these structured encounters ossify historical narratives that serve to ethnically homogenise, polarise and essentialize the participants’ understanding of selfhood, stratifying them according to their ethnic belonging. As a result, these encounters result in enforcing ethnic identities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr. Lea David is a comparative historical sociologist. She is currently a Marie Curie fellow (2017–2019) at the School of Sociology at University College Dublin (UCD), where she is finishing her research project on Nationalism, Memory and Human Rights in the Western Balkans and in Israel/Palestine.
Notes
1 The Historikerstreit spanned the years 1986 to 1989, and pitted right-wing against left-wing intellectuals. The positions taken by the right-wing intellectuals were largely based on the totalitarianism approach which takes a comparative approach to totalitarian states, while left-wing intellectuals argued that fascism was uniquely evil, arguing it could not be equated with the crimes of Soviet communism. The debate attracted much media attention in West Germany, with its participants’ frequently giving television interviews and writing op-ed pieces in newspapers.
2 The field was consolidated further with the establishment in 1986 of the “Unit for Democracy and Co-existence” – a section of the Ministry of Education officially entrusted with funding and supervising research and the development and proliferation of educational packages concerned with coexistence.
3 In 1998 The Centre for Arab Jewish education established the first integrated school in Misgav. In 2004, the third school was opened in a Palestinian Muslim village called Kfar Kara and in 2007 in the city of Beer Sheva in the Negev desert. The next year, the second school was opened in Jerusalem. By mixing Jewish and Palestinian students, those multicultural schools are in fact the extension of the logic of dialogue groups – once different sides are in contact with each other, they will put a human face on the collective enemy.
4 Many are not based on “facing the past” agenda, such as dialogue groups and arts, sports or even IT. Those, however are not covered by this research.
5 The Coexistence Model, the Joint Projects Model, the Confrontational Model, and the Narrative/ Story-Telling Model.
7 Peace agreement reached on Nov. 21, 1995, by the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, ending the war in Bosnia and outlining a General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
8 See, for example, Article 151 of the EU Treaty.
9 Nansen Dialogue Network - Promoting & Facilitating Dialogue in Support of Peace Building Processes Since 1995.
10 Centar za nenasilnu akciju.
11 Center for Nonviolent Action https://www.peaceinsight.org/conflicts/western-balkans/peacebuilding-organisations/cna/
12 Inicijativa Mladih za Ljudska Prava.
14 The available materials for the Israeli/Palestinian context and for the Western Balkans context are different. Because in Israel and Palestine, the tradition of face-to-face encounters is a long-standing one, there has been an impressive amount of research both on particular cases and on the long-term processes. There are in-depth analyses as well as partial transcriptions that give a pretty clear picture on the aspects of interest to me (in particular in relation to the ritualization of historical narratives and emotional energy). In the context of the Western Balkans, research with concrete examples is nascent. However, due to the Europeanization process and the demand for transparency, there is rich documentation (put together by NGOs who facilitate the projects or by an external professional/agency or independent researchers) when it comes to project reports and evaluation statements and research articles that give (relatively) correct indicators of the success and failures of multi-ethnic face-to-face projects. These projects are followed by intense reporting that is made available and it offers some precious insights from the participants themselves. In addition, there is a large amount of surveys available on a variety of topics including “dealing with the past”. There are several documentary movies that give some important insights on what happens to the participants during and after participating in the projects.
15 The distinction here is between “you” that implies singularity and “you” that implies plurality. In both Hebrew and Arabic there are different words for singular, as opposed to plural, speech so, during the conversation, it is perfectly clear whether the conversation is about individuals or about the groups they represent.
17 Dialogue groups between Jewish Israelis and the Palestinians from the Occupied Territories were carried out in both languages, and in places such as Newe Shalom, those encounters were significantly reduced during the Second Intifada in 2000. The vast majority of encounters continue to thrive inside Israel, bringing together Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, and their encounters were almost solely in Hebrew (as the Palestinian Israelis are bi-lingual). Many international dialogue group encounters that gather participants from a variety of geo-political settings (such as Serbs, Kosovars, Israeli Jews and Palestinians, Turks, Kurds etc.) were conducted in English.
18 KII, Youth Initiative for Human Rights, 12 May 2011, Sarajevo.
19 Nansen Dialogue Center Sarajevo and Saferword (2012) Leaving the Past Behind: The Perceptions of Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Report. (FGD participant, female, 28, Bosniak, unemployed, Sanski Most).
20 Nansen Dialogue Center Sarajevo and Saferword (2012) Leaving the Past Behind: The Perceptions of Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Report. (FGD participant, male, 30, Sanski Most).
21 Nansen Dialogue Center Sarajevo and Saferword (2012) Leaving the Past Behind: The Perceptions of Youth Bosnia and Herzegovina. Report. (FGD participant, female, 17, Bosnian Serb, high school student, Trebinje).
22 Nansen Dialogue Center Sarajevo and Saferword (2012) Leaving the Past Behind The Perceptions of Youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Report. (FGD participant, female, 18, Bosnian Serb, high school student, Doboj).
23 The asymmetry is more visible in Croatia, where the relationship between the majority and the minority, as well as urban/rural plays a significant part and pushes the sides back to their ethnic identities. Both the Croats and Serbs have their already well canonized narratives that once put in face-to-face interaction almost immediately surface. See more in Manojlovic (Citation2016).
24 FGD participant, female, 18, Bosnian Serb, high school student, Doboj.
25 FGD participant, female, 18, Bosnian Serb, high school student, Doboj.
26 See in “Ne moze da traje vecno” – “It cannot last forever” (2006); “Svi bi rado bacili kamen” – “All wish to cast a stone” (2006); “Pticu ti ne cujes” – “Not a bird to be heard” (2007). The three documentaries simulate dialogue between people from two sides: Bosniaks and Serbs in the first film, Serbs and Croats in the second, Croats and Bosniaks in the third. See here: https://nenasilje.org/en/category/film_en/
27 FGD participant, female, 17, Bosniak, high school student, Sanski Most.
28 FGD participant, female, 22, student, Sarajevo.
29 A group of 20 participants all in all: 5 from Serbia, 5 from BiH (3 from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and 2 from Republic of Srpska) 5 French and 5 Germans. The information is based on a conversation I had on 3 July 2018 with Cecille Blaser who conducted ethnographic research or RYCO activities in 2012–2014.
30 We do lack systematic research on that issue for the Balkan context.