DESTRUCTIVE PEACE; ABSENTEEISM OF MUTUAL CIVIC NATIONALISM AND SOCIAL CAPITAL IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
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Abstract
The manuscript addresses historical and substantive co-occurring processes and conditions of Bosnian state-building, peace-building, and developmental status quo by exploring civic nationalism and social capital patterns within sociocultural-political and ethnoreligious hybrid ideological polarization. Moreover, the paper examines the Western Balkans post-conflict ethnonational and religious orders, arguing that regional geopolitical secessionist rhetoric and failure impede social development and stability, aiming to conceptualize explications. Within the Dayton Peace Accords political system, ethnoreligious framework proves to be more consequential than plural civic space and social capital. In a democratic and liberal environment, no one should rule over anyone, but legalism and laws, which the state should enforce and thus guarantee peace and critical human security to all citizens. In the current atmosphere of disunity at various levels of B&H society, including the political issue of affiliation, it does not seem possible to unify the Bosnian nation socio-politically. The historical-ideologically shape of nationalities associates metaphysics to non-Bosnian territories and imposes people's awareness of external homelands. The nation-state is the exclusively political option of the contemporary age. Nationalism has proven to be an adverse ideology, leading to destruction, wars, and discrimination. Nevertheless, not every national project is malignant. Civic nationalism confronts the nation's ethnic-religious model generated on ethnicity, religion, and race. In order to understand the past, build a shared future, and form the decisive social capital, civic, democratic awareness, developing a better quality of life, it is crucial to decrease the behavioral practices of division promoted by dominant ethnopolitical antagonistic rhetorics.
Keywords
Abstract
The manuscript addresses historical and substantive co-occurring processes and conditions of Bosnian state-building, peace-building, and developmental status quo by exploring civic nationalism and social capital patterns within sociocultural-political and ethnoreligious hybrid ideological polarization. Moreover, the paper examines the Western Balkans post-conflict ethnonational and religious orders, arguing that regional geopolitical secessionist rhetoric and failure impede social development and stability, aiming to conceptualize explications. Within the Dayton Peace Accords political system, ethnoreligious framework proves to be more consequential than plural civic space and social capital. In a democratic and liberal environment, no one should rule over anyone, but legalism and laws, which the state should enforce and thus guarantee peace and critical human security to all citizens. In the current atmosphere of disunity at various levels of B&H society, including the political issue of affiliation, it does not seem possible to unify the Bosnian nation socio-politically. The historical-ideologically shape of nationalities associates metaphysics to non-Bosnian territories and imposes people's awareness of external homelands. The nation-state is the exclusively political option of the contemporary age. Nationalism has proven to be an adverse ideology, leading to destruction, wars, and discrimination. Nevertheless, not every national project is malignant. Civic nationalism confronts the nation's ethnic-religious model generated on ethnicity, religion, and race. In order to understand the past, build a shared future, and form the decisive social capital, civic, democratic awareness, developing a better quality of life, it is crucial to decrease the behavioral practices of division promoted by dominant ethnopolitical antagonistic rhetorics.