Moynihan European Research Centers presents: Azra Hromadzic

Invisible Citizens and Consociational Democracy in Post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina One of the most important goals of post-conflict reconciliation and democratization programs around the world is the establishment of a social order that would lead to peace and stability. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), this includes careful planning of the spatial reorganization of people and territory. More specifically, the project of democratization in BiH assumes a fixed relationship between people, understood as ethnic collectivities, and territory, understood as ethnically homogenous spaces. This particular spatial governmentality relies on a powerful set of rigid assumptions about belonging, identity, territoriality and politics in BiH, which makes “ethnically mixed” identities spatially unmappable and politically inapt. Furthermore, the state-making and peace-building policies make the traditional forms of urban mixing politically and socially risky, since mixing suggests socially and culturally deeper, historically rooted, and regionally expansive “feeling of otherness” that cannot be recognized nor nurtured under the existing democratic regime that favors ethnic segregation. Building on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Herzegovinian city of Mostar, in this presentation I focus on the everyday experiences of “invisible citizens,” who because of their “mixed identities,” became socially and politically unfit for the consociational model of peace and democracy. Pizza lunch will be served.