Citizens of an Empty Nation

Citizens of an Empty Nation
Title Citizens of an Empty Nation PDF eBook
Author Azra Hromadžic
Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press
Pages 246
Release 2015-04-07
Genre Social Science
ISBN 0812291220

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In the wake of devastating conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the polarizing effects of everyday ethnic divisions, combined with hardened allegiances to ethnic nationalism and the rigid arrangements imposed in international peace-building agreements, have produced what Azra Hromadžić calls an "empty nation." Hromadžić explores the void created by unresolved tensions between mandated reunification initiatives and the segregation institutionalized by power-sharing democracy, and how these conditions are experienced by youths who have come of age in postconflict Bosnia-Herzegovina. Building on long-term ethnographic research at the first integrated school of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Citizens of an Empty Nation offers a ground-level view of how the processes of reunification play out at the Mostar Gymnasium. Hromadžić details the local effects of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the processes of postwar state-making, shedding light on the larger projects of humanitarian intervention, social cohesion, cross-ethnic negotiations, and citizenship. In this careful ethnography, the Mostar Gymnasium becomes a powerful symbol for the state's simultaneous segregation and integration as the school's shared halls, bathrooms, and computer labs foster dynamic spaces for a rich cross-ethnic citizenship—or else remain empty.

I, Citizen

I, Citizen
Title I, Citizen PDF eBook
Author Tony Woodlief
Publisher Encounter Books
Pages 200
Release 2021-12-07
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1641772115

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This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.

Movement as Conflict Transformation

Movement as Conflict Transformation
Title Movement as Conflict Transformation PDF eBook
Author Susan Forde
Publisher Springer
Pages 235
Release 2018-07-21
Genre Political Science
ISBN 3319926608

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This book presents narratives of the social use of space in the divided city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Through the narratives of movement in the city, the work demonstrates how residents engage informally with conflict transformation through new movement and use of spaces. This book will appeal across the social sciences, and in particular to students, academics, and researchers in the fields of peace and conflict studies, political sociology, and human geography.

The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty

The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty
Title The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty PDF eBook
Author Rebecca Bryant
Publisher Cornell University Press
Pages 274
Release 2021-06-15
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1501755765

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Around the world, border walls and nationalisms are on the rise as people express the desire to "take back" sovereignty. The contributors to this collection use ethnographic research in disputed and exceptional places to study sovereignty claims from the ground up. While it might immediately seem that citizens desire a stronger state, the cases of compromised, contested, or failed sovereignty in this volume point instead to political imaginations beyond the state form. Examples from Spain to Afghanistan and from Western Sahara to Taiwan show how calls to take back control or to bring back order are best understood as longings for sovereign agency. By paying close ethnographic attention to these desires and their consequences, The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty offers a new way to understand why these yearnings have such profound political resonance in a globally interconnected world. Contributors: Panos Achniotis, Jens Bartelson, Joyce Dalsheim, Dace Dzenovska, Sara L. Friedman, Azra Hromadžić, Louisa Lombard, Alice Wilson, and Torunn Wimpelmann.

Collective Equality

Collective Equality
Title Collective Equality PDF eBook
Author Limor Yehuda
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 355
Release 2023-04-30
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1009093185

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In recent decades international and regional human rights norms have been increasingly applied to constitutional provisions, revealing significant tensions between primary political arrangements, such as power-sharing institutions, and human rights norms. This book argues that these tensions, generally framed as a peace versus justice dilemma, are built on an individualistic conception of justice that fails to account for the empirical reality in places characterized by ethnically based political exclusion and inequalities. By introducing the concept of 'Collective Equality' as a new theoretical basis for the law of peace, this timely book proposes a new approach for dealing with the tensions between peace-related arrangements and human rights norms. Through principled, pragmatic, and legal reasoning the book develops a new paradigm that captures more accurately what equality and human rights mean and require in the context of ethno-national conflicts, and provides potent guidance for advancing justice and peace in such places.

Race-ing Fargo

Race-ing Fargo
Title Race-ing Fargo PDF eBook
Author Jennifer Erickson
Publisher Cornell University Press
Pages 283
Release 2020-10-15
Genre Social Science
ISBN 150175114X

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Tracing the history of refugee settlement in Fargo, North Dakota, from the 1980s to the present day, Race-ing Fargo focuses on the role that gender, religion, and sociality play in everyday interactions between refugees from South Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the dominant white Euro-American population of the city. Jennifer Erickson outlines the ways in which refugees have impacted this small city over the last thirty years, showing how culture, political economy, and institutional transformations collectively contribute to the racialization of white cities like Fargo in ways that complicate their demographics. Race-ing Fargo shows that race, religion, and decorum prove to be powerful forces determining worthiness and belonging in the city and draws attention to the different roles that state and private sectors played in shaping ideas about race and citizenship on a local level. Through the comparative study of white secular Muslim Bosnians and Black Christian Southern Sudanese, Race-ing Fargo demonstrates how cross-cultural and transnational understandings of race, ethnicity, class, and religion shape daily citizenship practices and belonging.

Challenging the Representation of Ethnically Divided Cities

Challenging the Representation of Ethnically Divided Cities
Title Challenging the Representation of Ethnically Divided Cities PDF eBook
Author Giulia Carabelli
Publisher Routledge
Pages 118
Release 2021-05-25
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1000387909

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The book Challenging the Representation of Ethnically Divided Cities: Perspectives from Mostar questions the existing overrepresentation of Mostar as an ethnically ‘divided city’. While acknowledging the existence of internal borders, the chapters in this book assert that they are not solid nor fixed and, by exploring how they become material or immaterial, the book offers a deeper understanding of the city’s complex dynamics. Accordingly, the chapters in this book are attentive to how ethnic divides materialise or lose importance because of socio-political contingencies. Events, groups and spaces that promote reconciliation from the bottom-up are examined, not necessarily to assess their success and failures but rather to look at how they create networks, gain trust and form platforms that generate novel understandings of ethnic loyalties and party memberships. Further, and drawing both on the empirical data and theoretical reflections, this volume contributes to broader debates about ‘divided cities’ by suggesting the need to engage with these cities in their complexities rather than reducing them to their ethno-national divisions. The book engages with socio-political and economic complexities in order to shed light on how ethnic conflicts and resulting spatial partitioning are often just the surface of much more complex dynamics that are far less easy to disentangle and represent. The chapters in this book were originally published in Space and Polity.