What humanities and social sciences have made of Bosnia andHerzegovina: Analysis of ambivalent epistemological phenomena
Coordination: Sophie Gueudet and Aline Cateux
Deadline for submissions: 1 June 2025.
Thirty years after the end of the war and the genocide of Bosniak Muslims inBosnia and Herzegovina, what is the state of knowledge production about this country?
This call for papers stems from an observation repeatedly made by the editors ofthis special issue: research on Bosnia and Herzegovina is largely dominated by themes, research fields, and epistemological paradigms that, for thirty years,have reproduced scientific biases, often compromising the validity of this body of work and hindering the understanding of the country’s social, political, andeconomic dynamics.
Our hypothesis is as follows: these biases originate from structural flaws in the academic production and dissemination of knowledge on Bosnia andHerzegovina. We aim to identify, connect, and analyze them in order to question the research practices of Global North institutions on states arising from Yugoslav disintegration, a region that has become a precarious scientific object. We also aim to question area studies as a whole, which seem to be themselves a source of the particularisms they intend to combat.
Various avenues of reflection are to be explored to create a nuanced assessment of how humanities and social sciences have studied on Bosnia and Herzegovina,but also what they have done to the country. First, we need to question the conditions of scientific production: the productivity demand imposed by the economic model that now governs global academia conditions and considerably reduces research time, thus preventing long- term archival and fieldwork, which are essential for conducting in-depth studies on the structuring phenomena of Bosnia and Herzegovina before, during, and after the war.
The issue of funding sources is also integral to our reflection, as funders’ expectations shape not only the formats of funded research projects but also the nature of the knowledge produced. For instance, the view of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a “post-conflict” state, thirty years after the Dayton Accords, in a post-Yugoslav space constantly in need of securing and Europeanizing, is the result of a funding policy, both national and European, aiming at a researchproduction operationalized to assist political decision-making. However, this“post- conflict” analytical category is obsolete and does not reflect local representations of the contemporary social environment in which Bosnians struggle. This transformation of research into expertise has had tangible consequences on the country and its inhabitants, which should be questioned.
Consequently, the range of thematic, theoretical, and methodological possibilities is dramatically reduced, confining Bosnia and Herzegovina (and the post-Yugoslav space) within a representational system that casts it as a territory and system in perpetual crisis, obscuring long-term political and socialprocesses. This is reflected in the numerous scientific analyses, later picked up by political and media discourses, on the supposed political apathy of Bosnians, which is said to be a key factor in the country’s stalemate. However, ethnographic data paint a different picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as shownby emerging studies on social and environmental mobilizations, for instance. The perspectives of anthropologists and sociologists have brought forth the voices and actions of Bosnians, long absent from research in favor of an overproduction of studies on institutions and political circles supposed to represent ethnic groups often considered homogenous. While the entrenched image of Bosnia and Herzegovina as entirely at the mercy of “tensions” and trapped in eternal identity divides begins to crack, there remains a significant amount of work to unpack the social and economic realities of a country thatremains largely unknown despite substantial academic production.
We also wish to question the sources used, which too often seem limited to transcripts from ICTY sessions—valuable sources with much still to explore. However, we believe that these documents represent only a small part of the conflict’s history, which should be supplemented by more extensive datacollection. Few historians have accessed these archives and showcased them, thus paving the way for a historiographical renewal on contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. The issue of archives in Bosnia and Herzegovina is complex, with collections often poorly preserved, unindexed, and at risk of destruction. Detecting the content of any given collection is often challenging, let alone trying to trace them. Knowledge of the Serbo-Croatian language remains acrucial aspect for archival work.
Moreover, the intensive exploration of certain topics repeatedly has led to some rejection of so-called “Western” research, perceived as fixated on subjects with little relevance to the daily lives of Bosnians. This mistrust often reveals a glaring epistemic violence and a sense of the futility of research that is rarelyshared locally, with participants unable to engage with it.
It also seems essential to place Bosnia and Herzegovina within a broaderframework than that of area studies and highlight the transnational dynamics in which it is embedded. Introducing a global and transnational perspective in Bosnia and Herzegovina studies, besides generating new research synergies, will help to dismantle the “Bosnian” or post-Yugoslav particularism often conveyed by dominant scientific approaches and to connect Bosnia and Herzegovina, through the humanities and social sciences, with other territories, actors, and phenomena beyond Balkan studies.
Finally, as this call for papers is being drafted, the thirtieth anniversary commemorations of the genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda are coming to a close.Numerous books, exhibitions, and documentaries have accompanied this 30th anniversary, and many academic events have demonstrated the vibrancy of Rwanda studies and the circulation of knowledge about this genocide in other spheres than, for example, African studies. In comparison, the post- Yugoslav space, the wars of the 1990s, and the genocide of Muslims in Srebrenica have not received the same attention and interest. Srebrenica is more often referred to as a “massacre” rather than a “genocide” despite its qualification by the ICTY, and many politicians or journalists have described Ukraine as the “first conflict on European soil since 1945.” What does this erasure from European history reveal about the production of knowledge on Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past thirty years?
To address these issues, we particularly welcome article proposals aimed at thefollowing themes:
Renewal of thematic, methodological, and theoretical approaches toBosnia and Herzegovina studies in the humanities and social sciences.
Examination of academic practices conditioning BiH withinrepresentations of the “failed East.”
Articulation of Bosnia and Herzegovina studies with global studiesthrough a connected or transnational approach (moving beyond area studies).
“Balkanism” and “Eurocentrism,” questioning the positionality of researchers.
Over-research and invisibilization.
Highlighting the work of Bosnian researchers, with a focus on critiquing Northern/European academic logics, positionalityissues, and mechanisms of invisibilization and expertise confiscation.
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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
AFEBALK (17 avril 2025). Call for papers, Revue Connexe, “What humanities and social sciences have made of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Analysis of ambivalent epistemological phenomena”. AFEBalk. Consulté le 17 mai 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13rkq