The guardians of the rivers": redefining the community in ethnically divided Bosnia and Herzegovina

The history of the Western Balkans has been marked by the making and transforming of communities, territories and identities. The intertwining of these processes has strongly influenced the political culture in the region, defining power structures, political participation and institutions. With such premises, the political culture in the Western Balkans has been frequently depicted as passive and clientelistic, with a tendency to authoritarianism, populism and ethno-nationalism. Bosnia and Herzegovina makes no exceptions to such a picture. The process of nation-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina was marked by the war of the early 90s, that laid the grounds for today’s configuration of the country. Through a nationalist understanding of the three major ethno-religious communities inhabiting the country-the Bosnian Croats, the Bosnian Serbs, and the Bosniaks- the ethno-political entrepreneurs conceived the nation in ethno-cultural terms. It was within the community that national identity was acquired and preserved, and by redefining the ethnic geography of the country it acquired territorial scope. Relying on the strong communitarian bonds existing in the rural areas, the struggle for the ethnic definition of the territories was built upon the urban-rural divide. Identified as the carriers of the ethno-nationalist project, the “seljaci”, the peasants coming from the rural areas, took over the urban centers and dismantled their multi-ethnic configuration. Post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina is built on the institutionalization of the ethnic-based wartime landscape. Ethnicized identities, communities and territories constitute the grounds for a parochial political culture that leaves little space for pluralist and democratic forms of political participation, while fostering apathy, mistrust towards politics and disillusion about the possibility to bring change. Nevertheless in the last decades grass-root movements have emerged that tackled issues of interest to all citizens, fostering an inclusive and pluralist political participation. Among them, an environmental movement struggling for the defense of wild rivers from the threats posed by the construction of hydropower plants, brought small rural communities all across the country to engage in local struggles. This time not to set ethnic boundaries, but to defend what is perceived as a common- the water, the flora and the fauna- from private investors supported by political leaders. Relying on the community bonds for mobilization, the “guardians of the rivers” are laying the grounds for a redefinition of the community based on a collective identity alternative to the ethno-national one. By re-framing the attachment to their territories through an ecological perspective, and building networks that cross their ethnicized geographies, the rural communities are questioning their role as the core sites of the ethno-nationalist configuration. The aim of the research is to explore how are the “guardians of the rivers” fostering an alternative understanding of the community and whether these can constitute spaces for the formulation of a political culture based on pluralism, democracy and appeals for change in an ethnically divided context. The research is grounded on theoretical approaches that combine political sciences and social movements’ literature, and will rely on data retrieved through in-depth interviews conducted on the field.