On Bosnianness
In: Nations and nationalism: journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 19-23
ISSN: 1354-5078
Part of a symposium in honor of Professor Adrian Hastings draws on Hastings's comments on Bosnia-Herzegovina's evident inability to form a cohesive national consciousness as a point of departure for a discussion of the origins of the recent calamity. On a general level, Hastings appropriately argues for the centrality of state formation to the establishment of European nations. But, in discussing the "Yugoslav" Slavs, he emphasizes cultural rather than institutional characteristics of national integration, whereby the emergence of Serbian & Croatian ethnic nationalism & its tragic consequences for the more territorially self-identified Bosnians are inferred. Yet, this approach raises more problems than it solves. Rather, Bosnia's national identity & the attitudes of its neighbors were more significantly influenced by state projects than by ethnic ideologies. K. Coddon