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Territory has been a key physical and symbolic resource in post-socialist national mobilisation as well-defined nations have sought to confirm or create nation-states and their boundaries. This paper analyses geographical narratives accompanying the Bosnian Serb attempt to impose and retain control over territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnian Serb...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... seizure of territory was accompanied and reinforced by territorial and border narratives. Bosnian Serbs had already established control over territory where they had an absolute majority in 1991, including some areas with their relative majority (Figure 3). They also put forth a landownership argument to claim large swathes of sparsely populated rural territory. ...
Context 2
... Bosnian Serb politics of`Otheringof`Othering' was imprinted spatially. Therefore, the InterEntity Boundary Line and the notion of ethnic separation it embodied for Bosnian Serbs were lauded as an achievement (Figure 3 and Figure 5). A pledge was made that it ought``ought``to be carefully supervised in the future'' (C Â urkovic Â, 1998). ...
Citations
... Secondly, and drawing on ongoing debates also hosted by this journal on divided cities (e.g. Diez & Hayward, 2008;Kostovicova, 2004;Koureas, 2008;Marshall, 2013;Rafferty, 2012;Shirlow, 2006), we wish to push forward and revitalize the discussion about how to approach and frame research in these politically fragile environments. By engaging with complexities, we are not arguing that cities like Mostar (i.e. ...
... Secondly, and drawing on ongoing debates also hosted by this journal on divided cities (e.g. Diez & Hayward, 2008;Kostovicova, 2004;Koureas, 2008;Marshall, 2013;Rafferty, 2012;Shirlow, 2006), we wish to push forward and revitalize the discussion about how to approach and frame research in these politically fragile environments. By engaging with complexities, we are not arguing that cities like Mostar (i.e. ...
In this introduction, we discuss the scope of the edited volume by outlining the position of Mostar within much broader academic debates on ‘ethnically divided cities’. We question the representations of such contested cities as hopeless spaces of division, and suggest to explore instead the cracks that challenge overpowering logics of partition: the self-directed attempts at inter-ethnic solidarity, grassroots movements for social justice and dignity, and the inconsistent ways people in these cities inhabit and perform ethnic identities. We also introduce the themes of this Special Issue; Divided Cities as Complex Cities; Memories, Affect and Everyday Life; and Grassroots Politics.
... The alignment between territory and identity is described by Campbell (1998) as 'ontopological', as national identities are fused with the particular territory. The process is reinforced and sustained by "creating man-made landscapes of a symbolically charged character aimed at placing the nation's territory in the mind's eye" (Kostovicova, 2004). ...
Conceptually, this paper is about the becoming of states and how such states are a socially constructed spaces, imagined and performed by those who perceive themselves as belonging to that state. It asks through what imaginaries and performative practices does a state come into being? More specifically, the paper investigates how the state is imagined and performed in times of war and peace hoping to offer insights to the co-constitution of war or peace and the state. The analysis of the fledgling state and suspended state-making process makes visible the emplaced imaginary and performative quality of every state. It may also shed light on the constitutive relationship between war-making on one hand and state-making or state-breaking on the other, as it explores an embryotic process of crafting a state in the midst of war. Empirically, this paper investigates the state-making process of Republika Srpska (RS) through the conceptual lens of state becoming. Here RS figures both as an empirical state-making process, and as an example of an imagined and performed state to be conceptually explored. In particular it reads the irredentism of RS to justify its territorial claims on the basis of real or imagined historic or ethnic affiliations within the context of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the parallel state-making projects that remade the Western Balkans. Thus, this paper adds to the interdisciplinary debates on becoming a state as well as to imagined and performed statehood.
... There is a solid quantity of scholarly production on the Ottoman Empire, including its rule over the Balkans, including perspectives of history, politics, gender, and many more (Anscombe 2006; Buturovic and Schick 2007;Hickok 2006;Mažuranić 2007) as well as a significant amount of works concentrating on Bosnian and Serbian nationalism, especially in the nineties, from and after the wars of Yugoslav secession (Blackburn 1993;Davis 2014;Gow 1994;Kostovicova 2004;Naumović 1999;Rabrenovic 1997;Rieff 1996). Nationalism per se has been extensively studied during the 20 th century (Anderson 2006;Billig 1995;Calhoun 1993;Gellner and Breuilly 2008;Kedourie 1961;Ozkirimli 2005;Smith 1983). ...
The Ottoman rule over the Balkans has a long history of diverging perceptions in Bosnia and Serbia. In Serbia, this perception is a predominantly negative one, commonly disseminated “nation-wide” in history textbooks as the “500 years under the Turkish yoke”, denoting also a failure of discerning the difference between the modern Turkish state and the Ottoman Empire, that are commonly seen as one, both in the academia and within lay discourse. During the wars of the Yugoslav secession and afterwards, this perception increased in intensity with the counter-perception found in Bosnia, where both Turkey and the Ottoman Empire are held in high regard among the Muslim population. A specific type of linguistic nationalism ensued in Bosnia, trying to linguistically connect the native language to Turkish and the state to Turkey, at the same moment exacerbating the already active Serbian nationalism that found strength in perpetualizing the Ottoman Empire as an enemy. This article explores the intertwined nationalisms of Serbia and Bosnia, their high connectedness to the Ottoman Empire, and their interaction, where one sees Turkey as an ally, and the other as an enemy.
... Ultimately, a reduced but ethnically defined territory of this Bosnian Serb self-declared state became a basis for the Republika Srpska enshrined in the DPA (Map 7.2; cf. Kostovicova 2004). ...
... Moreover, the Federation of Bosnia & Hercegovina has been in a position to play an integrative role and thus resembles a parent state, whereas the Republika Srpska could qualify as a secessionist entity. In many respects, the Republika Srpska of today is the successor to the de facto state that existed in 1992-1995 and which was not dissolved by the Dayton Accords but was instead frozen in the form of a 'semi-independent entity' for Bosnian Serbs and separated from the Federation of Bosnia & Hercegovina territories by an Inter-Entity Boundary Line (Zahar 2004;Kostovicova 2004;Berg & Solvak 2011). Moreover, the 'Kosovo precedent' seems to have revitalised the notion of an attempted breakaway in the minds of Bosnian Serbs. 2 ...
This article questions whether a relatively strong conviction that legitimacy conveys nothing more than acceptance derived from legal recognition. Therefore several indices are constructed which are applicable to comparing and contrasting four major dimensions of political legitimacy both in parent states and in secessionist entities. In measuring political legitimacy in Cyprus, Moldova and Bosnia & Hercegovina in terms of identity and security on the one hand, and democracy and performance on the other, we may be able to observe cases where internal legitimacy has been neglected by the international community. This article concludes that legitimacy is a variable continuously used in the support and rejection of secessionist bids and integrationist endeavours.I would like to thank Rein Taagepera, Rein Murakas, Piret Ehin, Martin Mölder and Scott Pegg for useful comments and criticism to various drafts of this article. I owe special thanks to Mihkel Solvak for graphic design and Raul Toomla for drafting the questionnaire. I am grateful also to Yücel Vural, Muharrem Faiz, Dino Djipa, Elena Bobkova, Ion Jigau and Arcadie Barbarosie for help in conducting public opinion surveys in Cyprus, Moldova and Bosnia & Hercegovina. This article represents a contribution to the Estonian Science Foundation project ‘De Facto States in the International System: Legality vs. Legitimacy’ (grant no. 7951).
... 1316 Vznik RS byl pro Srby nezvratitelným výsledkem vlastních válečných snah. 1317 Etnické čištění v průběhu války způsobilo, že Srbové po jejím konci tvořili 97 % obyvatelstva RS. 1318 Sama RS se proto stala srbským národním státem uvnitř formálně celistvé Bosny. Srbské bosenství žádalo, aby bosenská státnost získala slabou institucionální složku a postrádala symbolickou složku. ...
... On the one hand, post-Dayton Bosnia has maintained territorial integrity as far as international law is concerned. On the other, however, the disaggregation of power in favour of the entities has encouraged Republika Srpska (RS) to strive for independent statehood and to prepare the local population for self-determination (Kostovicova, 2004). The architects of Dayton thus succeeded in securing a settlement, but largely failed in creating a single multi-ethnic country with functioning state structures and the sovereign power to govern it. ...
The UNDP report The Silent Majority Speaks (2007) demonstrates widespread consent and a popular desire for change while promoting a single state with strong regions as a compromise model for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Surprisingly, our own research (2009) on political legitimacy reveals quite the opposite tendencies, where political entities such as the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska (RS) more often drift apart than merge together. What strikes us is the fact that the FBiH, which advocates a more integrated state, does not necessarily have more legitimate grounds for achieving that goal than the secessionist counterclaim of RS in its own right. The two entities remain worlds apart on a range of issues and agree only on rather abstract principles of an ideal political order.
... In other settings where resources are based on territorial control, such increased ethnic competition is expected to result in further exclusion of minorities from majoritycontrolled lands. This model has often been used to explain ethnic conflicts and especially, the role of ethnic elites and entrepreneurs in encouraging ethnic divisions for purposes of internal cohesion and increased group attachment is well-documented and frequently condemned (Campbell, 1999;Gagnon, 2004;Kostovicova, 2004;Ragin, 1979;Sekulic, Massey, & Hodson, 2006;Simonsen, 2005;and Sudetic, 1998). In the case of the former Yugoslavia before the wars of the 1990s, ethnic tolerance was found to be negatively related to religiosity and to ethnic group identification and attachment. ...
... The final set of explanations to understand post-conflict friendships connects to the geography of conflict experiences and local contexts. Work by geographers in post-war BiH has emphasized the localized nature of the war and the context-specific post-war developments in the level of returnees after ethnic cleansing (Dahlmann & O Tuathail, 2005, Ó Tuathail & Dahlman, 2006Toal & Dahlman, 2006;Ó Tuathail and O'Loughlin, 2009 ) and on landscape symbolization and meanings as the various ethnic groups memorialize and mark the new ethnic lines that were enshrined by the Dayton Accords (Jeffrey, 2006;Kostovicova, 2004;Robinson & Probric, 2006). By mapping the responses to the questions about the present and hoped-for levels of inter-ethnic friendships for the 35 sample communities, a clear idea emerges of the variation across the BiH contexts and evident trends such as fewer friendship networks in areas near the frontlines during the war (places that saw the most protracted violence and greatest amount of population displacements). ...
International concerns about the continued ethnicization of Bosnian social and political life are both validated and challenged by the December 2005 public opinion study. Ordinary Bosnians are willing to consider cross-ethnic friendships and cooperation. The gap between ethnic elites and entrepreneurs and their constituents is evident still in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). The optimistic note of this study is sounded by the fact that half of respondents in BiH want more friends from different nationalities. The differences between the three ethnic groups are not dramatic. However, 41 percent of respondents stated that all or most of their friends were from their own nationality. Analysis of the responses by geographic location and by explanations related to modernization, ethnic competition and war experiences, indicated that all proved useful in understanding the distributions. The geographic distributions indicated the primacy of the urban—rural factor for questions on current friendship networks and preferences for friends in other ethnic groups.
