Arbetet ämnar förklara varför relationerna mellan bosniaker och kroater har sett utsom de har. Arbetet försöker med hjälp av instrumentalism, primordialism ochkonstruktivism förklara hur identiteten samt relationerna mellan kroater och bosniakerhar varierat under tidsperioden 1939-1994. Arbetet syftar även till att undersöka vilkenteori som bäst hjälper oss förstå varför identiteten och relationerna mellan kroater ochbosniaker har varierat. Arbetet analyserar relationerna mellan kroater och bosniakermed hjälp av idealtyper och kommer fram till att samtliga teorier behövs om man villförstå kroaters och bosniakers relationer åren 1939-1994. Arbetet kommer även framtill att instrumentalismens idealtyp kommer närmast händelseförloppet.

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The research paper examines the question of Uzbek identity, and how it was pictured and presented by Soviet scholars and historians of independent Uzbekistan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan announced its independence. One of the important questions on the agenda was the question of national identity. It was up to the newly independent state what they build their ideology on. Soviet historiography had different options for the origin of Uzbeks: some stated that history of Uzbeks starts from the 10th century; some suggested that it was the nomadic tribes to have entered the territory of the present Central Asia in the 15th century. The new government of Uzbekistan somehow continued with the Soviet tradition by following the idea that Uzbeks originate from the 10th century. There is even a group who dates the origin of Uzbeks back to the 1st millennium B.C. The literature written on Uzbek identity can be divided into two approaches taken: primordialism and constructivism. Both Soviet and Uzbek historiography base their thoughts on primordialistic approach, explaining that Uzbek identity is a long and complex process of ethno-genesis and that is associated through blood, language, religion, culture, etc. Whereas constructivists are explaining that Uzbeks as a nation appeared...

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis analyses the causes and evolution of the conflict in the Republic of Moldova and capabilities of three conflict-regulating mechanisms to facilitate the final political solution of this conflict. The leading cause of the conflict is the competition among post-Soviet politicians, fighting over the division of the Soviet state and redistribution of politico-economic benefits. In their fight for power, the elites mobilized instrumental and primordial grievances of the population, thus giving an ethnic aspect to the confrontation. As an important intervening variable for the conflict escalation into a military confrontation is Russian interest in maintaining politico-economic and military domination over the region. Over time, all ethnic causes had been eliminated, thus creating the necessary conditions for the final political settlement of the conflict. However, the status quo, created around this conflict, suits the politico-economic interests of the Transdniestrian elites, and reinforced by the Russian interest in keeping the region under its influence, is encouraging them to promote a radical position toward the process of negotiations and to demand anything but independence, a fact that cannot be accepted by the legal Moldovan Government. In such circumstances, the final solution depends on the attitudes of the external players. However, the international players are dispersed over the methods of resolving this conflict, thus reinforcing the deadlock situation in the process of negotiation. This thesis argues that under the current circumstances, none of the conflict regulating mechanism, partition, confederation and federation will solve that particular conflict. However, the federalism has the most potential to serve as a tool for unification and conflict-resolution, but only if the international community and internal players will promote democratic values, rule of law and free marked orientation in the region, will reduce the benefits of the status quo situation and, finally, will offer substantial politico-economic and cultural autonomy combined with fair representation at the central level to the Transdniestrian region. / Lieutenant Colonel, Armed Forces of the Republic of Moldova

<p>In accordance with the heterological tradition, this study emphasises the determining effect of theoretical assumptions on our conceptualizations of the past. This study scrutinises how classical archaeologists and ancient historians have conceptualized ethnic groups, in particular the Messenians.</p><p>Ethnic groups have traditionally been regarded as static with clear-cut boundaries. Each group has also been attributed with certain essential characteristics. According to this view, the Messenian ethnic identity was preserved during the period of Spartan occupation. This view is facilitated by a passive perspective, which regards evidence as reflections of reality and emphasises continuity. This culture historical perspective, which gives precedence to literary evidence and reduces archaeology to a handmaiden of history, has prevailed in classics from the 19th century until today. It can be juxtaposed with perspectives, discernable in classics from the 1960s onwards, which maintain that various parts of culture are manipulated in accordance with contemporaneous socio-political needs. These active perspectives — ranging from systems theoretical, functionalistic to processual models — resemble the instrumentalist model in anthropology which regards ethnicity as a dynamic and flexible strategy. Nevertheless, the instrumentalist redefinition of ethnicity did not influence classics until the late 1990s. According to the instrumentalist perspective, the Messenian ethnic identity emerged as a strategy of distinction in opposition to the Spartans. </p><p>Despite the variations, these perspectives can be regarded as part of a dogmatic tradition. Scholars within the dogmatic tradition tend to focus on the evidence and neglect the influence of the scholarly discourse on the conceptualizations of the past. This study, which is influenced by Michel de Certeau’s critique of the dogmatic tradition, elaborates on the discursive constraints of classical archaeology and ancient history. </p>

In accordance with the heterological tradition, this study emphasises the determining effect of theoretical assumptions on our conceptualizations of the past. This study scrutinises how classical archaeologists and ancient historians have conceptualized ethnic groups, in particular the Messenians. Ethnic groups have traditionally been regarded as static with clear-cut boundaries. Each group has also been attributed with certain essential characteristics. According to this view, the Messenian ethnic identity was preserved during the period of Spartan occupation. This view is facilitated by a passive perspective, which regards evidence as reflections of reality and emphasises continuity. This culture historical perspective, which gives precedence to literary evidence and reduces archaeology to a handmaiden of history, has prevailed in classics from the 19th century until today. It can be juxtaposed with perspectives, discernable in classics from the 1960s onwards, which maintain that various parts of culture are manipulated in accordance with contemporaneous socio-political needs. These active perspectives — ranging from systems theoretical, functionalistic to processual models — resemble the instrumentalist model in anthropology which regards ethnicity as a dynamic and flexible strategy. Nevertheless, the instrumentalist redefinition of ethnicity did not influence classics until the late 1990s. According to the instrumentalist perspective, the Messenian ethnic identity emerged as a strategy of distinction in opposition to the Spartans. Despite the variations, these perspectives can be regarded as part of a dogmatic tradition. Scholars within the dogmatic tradition tend to focus on the evidence and neglect the influence of the scholarly discourse on the conceptualizations of the past. This study, which is influenced by Michel de Certeau’s critique of the dogmatic tradition, elaborates on the discursive constraints of classical archaeology and ancient history.

This thesis addresses the relationship between sectarianism and state-making and nation-building in Iraq. It argues that sectarianism has been an enduring feature of the state-making trajectory in Iraq due to the failure of the modern nation-state to resolve inherent tensions between primordial sectarian identities and concepts of unified statehood and uniform citizenry. After a theoretical excursus that recasts the notion of primordial identity as a socially constructed reality, I set out to explain the persistence of primordial sectarian affiliations in Iraq since the establishment of the modern nation-state in 1921. Looking at the primordial past showed that Sunni-Shicite interactions before the modern nation-state cultivated repositories of divergent collective memories and shaped dynamics of inclusion and exclusion favorable to the Sunni Arabs following the creation of Iraq. Drawing on primary and secondary sources and field interviews, this study proceeds to trace the accentuation of primordial sectarian solidarities despite the adoption of homogenizing policies in a deeply divided society along ethno-sectarian lines. It found that the uneven sectarian composition of the ruling elites nurtured feelings of political exclusion among marginalized sectarian groups, the Shicites before 2003 and the Sunnis in the post-2003 period, which hardened sectarian identities. The injection of hegemonic communal discourses into the educational curriculum was found to have provoked masked forms of resistance that contributed to the sharpening of sectarian consciousness. Hegemonic communal narratives embedded in the curriculum not only undermined the homogenizing utility of education but also implicated education in the accentuation of primordial sectarian identities. The study also found that, by camouflaging anti-Shicite sectarianism, the anti-Persian streak in the nation-state’s Pan-Arab ideology undermined Iraq’s national integration project. It explains that the slide from a totalizing Pan-Arab ideology in the pre-2003 period toward the atomistic impulse of the federalist debate in the post-2003 period is symptomatic of the ghettoization of identity in Iraq. This investigation of the interaction between primordial sectarian attachments and the trajectory of the making of the Iraqi nation-state is ensconced in the project of expanding the range and scope of social scientific applications of the nation-building and primordialism lines of analysis.

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The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...