Politics of Identity in Post-Conflict States: The Bosnian and Irish experience

Description

Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe’s other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘border’ discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies. Cover Title Copyright Contents List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction PART I The impact of empire on Ireland and the Balkans 2 ‘Dangerous fumes’: religion, tobacco and the English colonial mind in the seventeenth century 3 War and division in the golden valley: Sarajevo’s twentieth century 4 The lies my diary told: use of autobiography in the study of mixed marriage in the former Yugoslavia 5 Traitors within and bridges across Derry and Mostar: an exploratory comparison 6 War and a Herzegovinian town: Mostar’s un-bridged divisions 7 Northern Ireland in a Balkan perspective: the cultural dynamics of complex conflicts PART II City infrastructure, culture-specific architecture and natural boundaries 8 Our side, their side and all those places in-between: neutrality and place in a divided city 9 Rubbers, pens and crayons: rebuilding Mostar through art interventions 10 Mitrovica: a city (re)shaped by division 11 The new ‘old’ face of Skopje: photo-essay on the rise and demise of a Balkan city 12 The Neman river: the multicultural diversity of the river’s space 13 Catchment identity, connections and water governance in the contested landscapes in north-west Ireland 14 The ‘New Ulster’ project: culture, reform and crisis 1945–1972 15 Immigration, race and ethnicity in an already divided society: dealing with ‘new’ diversity in Northern Ireland PART III Space, place, location and border in the literatures and identities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland 16 Trashing (ethno-)nationalism: writing about the war in contemporary Bosnian literature 17 A funeral, a wolf and Bruce Lee in Mostar: revised urban contract and the intersection of time and space 18 Belfast memories: narrating the self in Owen McCafferty’s dramatic oeuvre 19 (Re)locating identities in the post-conflict literatures of Mostar and Derry/Londonderry Index