Identity, ethnic boundaries, and collective victimhood: analysing strategies of self-victimisation in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

Characteristics from the social construction of 'self' and of 'others' in Bosnia-Herzegovina show that the creation of a positive self-image in this postwar society is strongly connected with collective self-victimisation of one's own ingroup. An objective hermeneutical analysis of narrative interviews conducted with Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Serbs reveals five self-victimisation strategies: Two dissociative strategies, which conspicuously reproduce the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator along ethnic lines and candidly reinforce the ethnic boundariesmoral alchemy and double relativisationand three strategies, which seem to transcend the boundaries between ethnic in-group and out-groupthe associative strategies of subjectification of war, the externalisation of responsibility, and silence. A subsequent contextualisation of the identified strategies indicates, however, that, ultimately, associative strategies are equally conducive to the further manifestation of ethnic boundaries.

Naming and framing victims: Identity, ‘usable’ victimhood, and the spectral turn in transitional justice

“…The need for a ‘usable’ past heightens in contexts of protracted political conflict where various narratives seek to legitimise one’s own violence and delegitimise the violence of one’s opponents (Bar-Tal, 1990, 2007; Frank, 1967; Rosland, 2008), project a positive self-image of the in-group (Baumeister and Hastings, 1997; Mijic, 2021; Tajfel and Turner, 2004), and cultivate a collective sense of victimhood that positions the in-group as the primary victims of conflict (Bar-Tal, 2007; Bar-Tal and Halperin, 2013; Lynch and Joyce, 2018; Mijic, 2021). While in reality, political conflict is inherently ‘messy’ on several levels, conflict narratives selectively draw from the past to create a ‘black and white picture’ that replaces such messiness with a ‘parsimonious, fast, unequivocal, and simple understanding’ (Bar-Tal, 2007: 1436).…”

Is ‘white nationalism’, nationalism?

“…Feelings of victimhood can exist in the absence of actual conflict (Armaly & Enders, 2021), and feelings of white victimhood mobilise sympathetic white constituencies and help them recruit new members (Berbrier, 2000, p. 188). Mijić posits that a sense of collective victimhood helps preserve group identity and promote a positive group image (Mijić, 2021, p. 474). Aside from bringing so‐called white nationalists together, collective victimhood also can insulate these audiences from criticism.…”