CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Stavrevska, Elena B. |
|---|---|
| Title | Peace for Whom: Agency and Intersectionality in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Summary | Both peacebuilding practice and mainstream literature have predominantly approached the examination of post-war societies is a static and unidimensional manner, portraying events, practices, and actors as fixed in space, time, and identity. In line with that approach, peace and reconciliation have often been understood as a mirror image of the preceding war. Consequently, when the conflict is regarded as a clash between different ethnicities, peace is viewed as a state of those ethnicities coming together, which is then reflected in the decision- and policy-making processes. This understanding, using the prism of groupism whereby (ethnic) groups are analysed as the primary societal actors, ascribed with particular characteristics and agency, presupposes homogeneity of the groups in question. In so doing, it disregards the various intra-group struggles and the multiplicity of social identities beyond ethnicity. Furthermore, it also cements ethnicity as the most important, if not the only important political cleavage in the new, post-war reality. The described tendency contributes to important dynamics, social practices, and intersubjectivities remaining unrecognised. This thesis, thus, grapples with the question of how such understanding of peace affects different actors in post-war societies. What kinds of subjectivity and agency are created and enacted as a result and which ones are excluded and silenced? What relations of power and inequality are consolidated in the process? The thesis problematises agency at the level of post-war societies and sheds light on the social dynamics, practices of inequality, and modalities of agency that certain peacebuilding initiatives (re)inscribe. In an attempt to highlight the simultaneous situatedness of actors in multiple evolving relational contexts, it uses the concept of intersectionality, which draws attention to intersecting social identities, systems of power, and forms of inequality. It particularly examines ethnicity, gender, class, and age, as some of the major existing axes of social division. Drawing on a ten-month ethnographic research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, intersectionality is used as a heuristic device in three case studies, with ethnicity, gender, and class as analytic entry points. The first case study looks at the lives and practices of people living near the Inter-Entity Boundary Line. The second one zeroes in on women that have taken out micro loans aimed at addressing household poverty and promoting gender equality and female empowerment through entrepreneurship. The third and final case study relates to the subsistence and informal economies, with particular focus on the people working at the Arizona market near Brčko and taxi drivers in various Bosnian towns. Relating the Bosnian examples to macro processes, the thesis offers a number of recommendations for peacebuilding practitioners and scholars. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/stavrevska_elena.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University