Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-135). Also available online through Digital Dissertations.

The aim of this thesis is to observe how media and activism can be a part of the post-conflict peace building in Bosnia as well as to highlight the work and importance of NGOs in the country. This thesis will focus on how these NGOs work with media and activism in order to contribute to the post-conflict peace building. Further, it will analyze elements of civic activism as well as grassroots activism to see how the organizations implement these in their work. Eight interviews have been conducted with two participants from four NGOs in the country. The result shows that whilst ethnic divisions still largely characterize the contemporary Bosnian society, there are instances where ethnic differences have been disregarded. Further, the result shows that the everyday work of these organizations showcase a great example of how ethnic divisions can be combated and how social change can be achieved.

No description available.

Donor states use aid and grants to promote foreign interests, either directly or through international institutions. This thesis argues that the concept of localization is an emerging form of paternalism that donor states use to advance their domestic interests internationally. This study examines the effect of paternalism on aid localization in conflict zones. It emphasizes the differences between the global north and the global south. A qualitative case study design was applied. Two cases of paternalistic-based localization strategies were subjectively selected for this study considering their geographical locations: the global North and the global South. The cases include Bosnia and Herzegovina from the global north and the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the global south. This thesis used a qualitative methodology base on three main methods: case study method, narrative method and comparative method. Additionally, The data collected was mainly from secondary sources like peer-reviewed articles from journals, as well as resolutions, reports, and other Uppsala University library sources. The literature collected was extensively reviewed for analysis and discussion. Case study, comparative, and narrative methods were used to analyse the data on the selected cases of paternalism-based localization strategies. The thesis found that donor states' paternalism-based localization strategies in the global south reduce affected populations' agency and impede effective humanitarian interventions. The thesis then concluded that paternalism-based localization strategies are still common among donor states in humanitarian and other intervention aid, which has negative effects on interventions. Secondly, geographical, geopolitical, and geoeconomic factors influence paternalism-based localization strategies, affecting interventions negatively. Finally, paternalism-based differentiated localization approaches by donors based on geography have negative effects on the population and also prolonging the conflicts.

No description available.

On July 12th, 1990 the Serb Democratic Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina (SDS BiH) held its founding assembly. Less than five months later, it participated in the November 1990 elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), winning a decisive majority of the vote of ethnic Serbs. Yet, SDS BiH was not an ordinary political party. In the sixteen months that followed the elections, it initiated a series of activities that eroded the power of BiH institutions to which it had been elected. SDS BiH declared its own organs superior to those of BiH and established exclusive control in Serb-majority areas. In early 1992, it united these areas into a single Serb Republic, formed an exclusively Serb armed force, and set out to violently expand the territory that would be incorporated into the new statelet. This study seeks to advance an understanding of the role of ethno-nationalist agents in the outbreak of violent conflicts fought in the name of ethnic nations by analyzing the activities of SDS BiH on the political homogenization of Serbs in the two years leading up to the 1992 onset of violence in BiH. It incorporates the tools of discourse analysis and the recent findings in the studies of human cognition, identifying the agency of SDS BiH in the power of the Party's discourse to produce affective sensibilities that served its nationalist agenda. It argues that this engineering of affect was crucial for constituting the dispersed individuals of Serb ethnic background as a palpable political group, and preparing them for armed mobilization. The analysis also argues that ethno-nationalist agency can be properly understood only by considering the case-specific structural factors with which all agents interact. Toward this point, it draws contrast between the agency of SDS BiH and that of the National Movement in the Republic of Georgia, showing that ethnic structures hold a greater explanatory value in the Georgian case. Rather than departing from pre-given ethnic groups, both case studies suggest that conflict analyses should problematize the dynamic interaction between the dominant ethno-nationalist agents and ethnic structures, which produce ethnic groups, ethnic interests and sides to armed conflicts. / Ph. D.

Thesis--School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1996. / Shipping list no.: 98-0921-M. "August 1997." Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet from the Air University Press web site. Address as of 10/9/03: http://aupress.au.af.mil/SAAS%5FTheses/Beale/beale.pdf; current access is available via PURL.

[pt] Este trabalho examina lugares cotidianos para entender como demarcações são efetuadas, empregadas, alteradas e deslocadas na Bósnia-Herzegovina do pós-Dayton. Analisaremos aqui práticas de demarcação que podem ou não envolver delimitações geográficas e que foram reorganizadas pelo Acordo de Paz de Dayton de formas a lhes assegurarem um papel mais proeminente na vida sociopolítica da Bósnia e Herzegovina. Ao promover um esforço para conceituar fronteiras e demarcações, esta tese argumenta que estas são dependentes de práticas, o que lhes confere um status precário e indica que podem ser alteradas. Assim, elas podem ser reempregadas (no sentido de se desviar de um significado e receber um significado diferente); alteradas e deslocadas, mas também muito mais, como será exposto aqui: minimizadas, subvertidas, desdenhadas, mas também reforçadas, reafirmadas e celebradas. É, portanto, olhando para o cotidiano que este trabalho busca entender o(s) sentido(s) atribuído(s) a essas demarcações, sabendo, no entanto, que elas são permeadas de contradições e podem ser empregadas de maneiras diferentes por pessoas diferentes. O cotidiano, que geralmente recebe nossa desatenção diária, será considerado aqui uma categoria analítica relevante através da qual realizaremos essa pesquisa. Na verdade, o cotidiano não pode ser reduzido a práticas sem importância ou ao banal, como o mero resíduo do político. O cotidiano está, na verdade, profundamente relacionado com todas as atividades, e as engloba com todas as suas diferenças e conflito (Lefebvre, 1991:97) e, portanto, possibilita conexões e mediações entre categorias frequentemente apresentadas como dicotomias, como o público e o privado, o excepcional e a rotina (Lefebvre, 2008:16). É, portanto, no e através do cotidiano que essas tensões são negociadas, as disputas têm lugar e apropriações e até transformações são realizadas. Esta pesquisa foi realizada em Sarajevo e Mostar, duas das principais cidades da Bósnia-Herzegovina. Mais especificamente, esta pesquisa analisa lugares cotidianos dentro dessas cidades, como escolas, ruas, praças, cafés, estações de ônibus e shoppings, que muitas vezes atuam como a própria materialização dessas demarcações (etnonacionais, entre o local/internacionais) ou a arena na qual essas demarcações são reconfiguradas e deslocadas. Esta tese, portanto, proporciona um relato alternativo em relação a narrativas mais oficiais sobre divisões etnonacionais, bem como questiona as categorias local e internacional na Bósnia do pós-Dayton. / [en] This work looks at everyday places in order to understand how boundaries are enacted and re-employed, shifted and displaced in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. Post-Dayton boundaries correspond to practices of demarcation that may or may not entail geographic delimitations and that have been reorganized by the Dayton Peace Agreement in ways that have assured them a more prominent role in sociopolitical life in BiH. While engaging in an effort to conceptualize borders and boundaries, this thesis argues that boundaries are dependent on practices, which confers upon them a precarious status and indicates that they might be changed. Boundaries may thus be re-employed (in the sense of diverting its original meaning and employing a different one); shifted and displaced, but also much more, as it will be exposed here: crossed, minimized, subverted, dismissed, disdained, but also reinforced, reaffirmed and celebrated. It is thus looking at the everyday that this work makes sense of those boundaries, knowing, however, that they are permeated with contradictions and may be enacted in different ways by different people. The everyday, which usually receives our daily inattention, will be considered here a relevant analytical category through which undertake this research. Indeed, the everyday cannot be reduced to the unimportant or the banal, as mere residual or the remnants of the political. Rather, it is profoundly related to all activities, and encompasses them with all their differences and their conflicts; it is their meeting place, their bond, their common ground (Lefebvre, 1991: 97), and it thus provides for connection and mediation between categories often presented as dichotomies such as public and private, the exceptional and the routine (Lefebvre, 2008: 16). It is in and through the everyday that those tensions are played, the disputes are fought and appropriations and even transformation take place. The research was undertaken in Sarajevo and Mostar, two of the main cities in BiH. More specifically, this research looks at everyday places within these cities, such as schools, streets, squares, cafés, coach station and shopping malls, which might be enacted as the very (ethnonational, local/international) boundaries or the arena in which those boundaries are diverted and displaced. This thesis, therefore, provides for an alternative account to more official narratives about ethnonational divisions, as well as questions clear-cut distinctions between the local and the international in post-Dayton BiH.

This thesis aims to investigate EU peacebuilding in Bosnia-Herzegovina, focusing on the ways in which EU actors engage with local cultural actors and vice versa. Given that, in the liberal peacebuilding tradition, civil society has been considered a key actor in the public sphere, peacebuilding actors have tended to neglect seemingly more marginal actors and their subtle ways of impacting on the peacebuilding process. However, this thesis contends that processes of interaction are not always direct and visible, but centre on discourse clusters, which I frame as imaginary ‘spaces of agency’. Through the creation of meanings within a space of agency and its translation into other imaginary spaces, actors develop the power to impact upon the peacebuilding process, often in coded ways and therefore invisible in the public sphere, as peacebuilding actors, including the EU, have created it. A typology of the modes of interaction and possible responses between spaces helps understand the complexities and nuances of peacebuilding interaction. The thesis uses this framework to analyse several exemplary spaces of agency of the EU, rooting them in institutional discourses with specific reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Based on this, I investigate a number of responses to those spaces on the part of local cultural actors, as well as how the latter contribute to the emergence of alternative localised spaces, where the EU’s spaces fail to connect to the everyday dimensions of peace. I suggest that this represents a way in which local actors try to claim the ownership of peacebuilding back in subtle ways. This also points to the ability of actors that have traditionally been excluded from the peacebuilding project to contextualise abstract and distant processes into what matters locally, as well as their capacity to reject and resist when the EU’s spaces remain irrelevant for local peacebuilding imaginations.

<p>This dissertation explores the ‘socio-cultural dilemma’ facing international peacebuilders in war-torn societies through a case study of the post-conflict process in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is done with the help of a typological approach of the grid-group Cultural Theory framework, which defines four social solidarities – or ideal type cultures – of individualism, egalitarianism, fatalism and hierarchy. A central argument in the thesis is that international intervention is culturally individualistic and/or egalitarian, thus socio-culturally unviable in war-torn societies, which are usually dominated by hierarchical and fatalist social solidarities.</p><p>This underlying socio-cultural conflict is used to trace the Bosnian post-war process, where the relationship between the managing international institution – the Office of the High Representative of the International Community – and the local nationalist elites repeatedly changed in response to the failure of international policies to produce the desired result, namely broad socio-cultural change in the local politics and society. Four different periods in the process are identified: 1) ’economic conditionality’, 2) ‘Bonn Powers’, 3) ‘the concept of ownership’ and 4) ‘Euro-Atlantic integration’. Each period is defined by different culturally biased policies, supported by corresponding social relations and strategic behaviours.</p><p>The individualistic and egalitarian biased approaches usually resulted in failures, as they were not viable in the local socio-cultural context. After adapting to the local context, new viable approaches produced results in specific policy areas, but at the cost of unwanted side-effects in the form of reinforcement of dominant social solidarities. The result was therefore contrary to the broad goal of the process, which was to transform the local political culture.</p><p>In other words, the defining and re-defining of the OHR’s role in the Bosnian process was a consequence of the dilemma of having to make an unsatisfactory choice: either to adapt to the way the political game is played in the Bosnian socio-cultural context in order to achieve effectiveness in the policy process, or to stay true to the peacebuilders’ own cultural biases and attempt to change the local socio-cultural accordingly. In essence, it is argued, this is the socio-cultural viability dilemma that is inherent in international peacebuilding.</p><p>In unveiling of the socio-cultural viability dilemma, the dissertation explores central problems in the Bosnian post-conflict process. It provides a credible explanation to a number of hitherto unexplained difficulties and paradoxes experienced in Bosnia. It concludes that the international intervention in this particular case was neither a success story nor a failure per se, but one which failed to properly address the dilemma of socio-cultural viability. The key conclusions regarding peacebuilding in general are that there should be a greater under¬¬standing of socio-cultural issues in peacebuilding in order to better manage the socio-cultural viability dilemma. Practically, this means that international peacebuilders need to adapt to local context and strive towards the goal of local ownership of the process. The aim should be to make the intervention as viable as possible, as quickly as possible, to boldly implement policies that promote changes in the local socio-cultural context, and to withdraw only after the necessary conditions for local ownership are in place.</p>