Ethnic and national identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina : kinship and solidarity in a polyethnic society 9781498594172, 1498594174

Table of contents :
Chapter One: Authentic Syncretism in CekaniciChapter Two: On Affinity in Bosnia-HerzegovinaChapter Three: Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Chapter Four: National Identities in Kinship: The Case of Serbia and Bosnia-HerzegovinaChapter Five: The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Citation preview

Ethnic and National Identity in BosniaHerzegovina

ANTHROPOLOGY OF KINSHIP AND THE FAMILY Series Editors Murray Leaf (University of Texas at Dallas) Dwight Read (University of California, Los Angeles) Mission Statement Kinship relations create the foundation of human systems of social organization. In order to understand kinship as a system of social relations, it is necessary to examine the structural organization of terms. The Anthropology of Kinship and the Family series is based on the notion that the underlying ideas of kinship can have more immediate importance than the linguistic symbols, as these ideas are evident in all behaviours involved in kin relationships. This series encourages contributors to highlight the social and conceptual power of kinship terminologies. Scholarly monographs and edited collections that focus on old topics associated with kinship, such as family organization and rules of marriage, and new approaches to the study of kinship systems are welcome. Books in Series Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Kinship and Solidarity in a Polyethnic Society by Keith Doubt and Adnan Tufekčić

Ethnic and National Identity in BosniaHerzegovina Kinship and Solidarity in a Polyethnic Society Keith Doubt and Adnan Tufekčić

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN: 978-1-4985-9417-2 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-4985-9418-9 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

vii

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1   Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 2   On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina

9 31

3  Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina Coauthored with Harry Khamis 47 4  National Identities in Kinship: The Case of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 63 5   The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

75

Conclusion 85 Appendix A

89

Appendix B

91

Appendix C

93

Bibliography 95 Index 103 About the Authors

105

v

List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES Figure 1.1. Figure 1.2. Figure 1.3. Figure 1.4. Figure 1.5. Figure 1.6. Figure 1.7. Figure 1.8. Figure 1.9. Figure 1.10. Figure 1.11. Figure 1.12. Figure 1.13. Figure 5.1.

Srebrenik Fortress on a foggy day. Source: Authors’ original photo. Tombstone near Srebrenik Fortress. Source: Authors’ original photo. Turbe in Gornji Srebrenik. Source: Authors’ original photo. Pobro’s tomb in Gornji Srebrenik. Source: Authors’ original photo. Village in Čekanići. Source: Authors’ original photo. Mosque and turbe in Čekanići: Source: Authors’original photo. Men with dervish after prayer. Source: Authors’ original photo. Turbe in Čekanići. Source: Authors’ original photo. Two tombstones, one with Muslim headstone, in turbe. Source: Authors’ original photo. Tombstone near turbe in Čekanići. Source: Authors’ original photo. Turbe in Čanići with Catholic church: Source: Authors’ original photo. Grave in Čanići with coins: Source: Authors’ original photo. Turbe at dusk before Bajram with candles. Source: Authors’ original photo. Bešika, wooden cradle. Source: Authors’ original photo. vii

10 10 11 12 15 16 17 18 19 23 26 27 28 78

viii

List of Figures and Tables

TABLES Table 3.1.

Engagement party (vjeridba) by ethnicity. Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR Table 3.2. Elopements (ukrala se) by ethnicity. Source: SelfReported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR Table 3.3. Affinal visitations (prijatelji) by ethnicity. Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR Table 3.4. Visiting best man four or more times a year by ethnicity. Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR Table 3.5. Homogamy by ethnicity. Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR Appendix B. Summary of Cross Tabulations for Affinal Visitations Ten or More Times a Year Appendix C. Summary of Log-Linear Tables in Chapter Three

52 53 54 56 58 91 93

Acknowledgments

Shaye Sakos assisted us with the descriptive statistics in Chapter Two, “On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Harry Khamis, a statistician at Wright State University, carried out the log-linear analysis in Chapter Three, “Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” originally published in East European Quarterly and republished here with permission. Parts of Chapter Five, “The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina” were previously published in Spirit of Bosnia / Duh Bosne and Family Upbringing: The Identities of Families at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century and are republished here with permission. Madison Krstich and Sophia Reutter from Wittenberg University Writing Center provided editorial support. Bojana Vuković translated several texts from Bosnian to English. A Fulbright Scholar Grant at the University of Tuzla in BosniaHerzegovina, a grant from the Department of State Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Title VIII), and a Faculty Research Grant from Wittenberg University made the collaboration and field investigations in this book possible.

ix

Introduction

In this study, we investigate the social organization, the cultural character, and the boundary maintenance of inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina and why nation-state building is a problematic process vis-à-vis the nationalism of Croatia and Serbia. Our work contributes not only to a better understanding of who Bosnians are, but also to a better understanding of what ethnic groups are in an increasingly complex and modern society. While we address the consequences of the recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we focus primarily on the social solidarity that arises from kinship relations and how these relations cut across ethnic as well as national identities. The particular social relations we will closely examine are affinal (in-lawships) and ritual (fictive) kinships. Bosnians live in a polyethnic society. It is unproductive, Fredrik Barth (1969) argues, to study ethnic groups in isolation from each other, as remote islands. It is better to investigate the boundary maintenance of an ethnic group within a larger society rather than its intrinsic values, e.g., a faith tradition like Islam, Orthodoxy, or Catholicism. This point is important. Following this anthropological truism, Tone Bringa (2002, 31) writes: “Neither Bosniak, nor Croat, nor Serb identities can be fully understood with reference only to Islam or Christianity respectively but have to be considered in a specific Bosnian context that has resulted in a shared history and locality among Bosnians of Islamic as well as Christian backgrounds.” Multiculturalism thus appears to be a misnomer for understanding Bosnia’s history, even if the term is frequently used. In Bosnia, there are not just multiple cultures co-residing in the same vicinity. There instead is a singular culture that encompasses its different ethnic groups making them synergistically interdependent. Our study understands Bosnia as a polyethnic society, defined not in terms of political ideologies or nation-state institutions, but in terms of shared marriage practices and kinship culture. We provide for the social character of Bosnians as 1

2

Introduction

members of ethnic groups and, as importantly, as members of a larger cultural identity, of which every Bosnian is an essential but not exclusive part. Balkan ethnologists identify the context but not the focus of our research. The zadruga, a communal organization—being less than a village, but more than a nuclear family—was traditionally the primary foundation for kinship organization among South Slavs. “Earlier writers have emphasized bloodrelatedness as the founding principle of the zadruga and as binding and holding its members together” (Filipović 1982a, 4). The kin ties in the male line grounded the social solidarity and principle of the communal organization. Dinko Tomašić focused on the Croatian or Slavonic variant and Jovan Cvijić on the Serbian or Dinaric variant (Cvijić 1930; 1931a; 1931b; Kaser 1998; Tomašić 1942; 1945; 1948; 1954). Identifying the guiding assumption that informed this canon of literature, Karl Kaser (1998, 92) writes, “The zadruga was the locale where national poems and folklore were created and fostered. In the zadruga the highest moral level of solidarity, sympathy, and emotional warmth could be reached.” Balkan anthropology inherits the perspectives of these figures and sustains their frame of reference that overlooks what is distinctive about kinship in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Halpern 1968; Hammel 1968; Hayden 1994; Kaser 1998; Simic 1971; 1999; 2000). An exception to this pattern is found in the work during the same era of Vera Stein Erlich (1966; 1978), who before World War II conducted survey research on families and marriage customs in Yugoslavia. Erlich clearly observed the distinctiveness of marriage customs in Bosnia-Herzegovina; first, she noted that “In patriarchal regions [referring to Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia] the bride was chosen almost exclusively and autonomously by the parents of the young man” (1966, 183). Then Erlich stated that the situation in Bosnia was entirely different. “In Bosnia, the independence of the young men is considerable . . . Marriage is arranged by the children . . . the most important point is that the two young people are fond of each other and that they have some means. Everything else is of secondary significance” (Erlich 1966, 188). By way of contrast, Tomasˇić (1954, 302) observed that the zadruga’s authority means “The time of marriage and choice of mate is therefore a matter for the household to decide. There is little the marriage candidate can say about it.” Our intent is to stress and develop the significance of Erlich’s observation made during the same era that Tomašić and Cvijić conducted their studies. Since Erlich’s studies, two modern anthropologists, William G. Lockwood (1972; 1974; 1975; 1979) and Tone Bringa (1995), have reported similar observations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lockwood made his ethnographic observations in the seventies in an isolated, mountainous Bosniak village in central Bosnia; Bringa collected her observations in the eighties in another village in central Bosnia comprised of two ethnic groups, Bosniak and Croat.



Introduction 3

In their studies, Lockwood and Bringa described two distinctive and closely interrelated patterns. One was that among Bosniaks in rural areas elopements (ukrala se) rather than wedding ceremonies (svadba) were a frequent way of initiating marriage. Ninety percent of the marriages in the village Lockwood (1974) studied were formed through elopement. This romantic and often impetuous adventure, simulating (with the woman’s consent) the Balkan legend of bride kidnapping (otmica), was a custom that took guts. Although elopements were more common among the poor to avoid wedding costs, Lockwood (1974, 263) pointed out that members of wealthy households in the village he studied also married through elopement. Erlich (1966) characterized these practices as overly romantic and perhaps fatalistic, sometimes resulting in failed marriages through a relatively easy divorce process. At the same time, the practice reflected the culturally sanctioned autonomy of young adults, especially young women with respect to this important life decision. One of us, Keith Doubt (2014), in a study titled Through the Window: Kinship and Elopement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, found elopement to be a common marriage custom among not only Bosniaks, but also Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs. Almost every family in Bosnia has a story of a relative’s dramatic elopement that the family re-tells when they gather. One of us, an inhabitant of Bosnia, followed this traditional marriage custom, eloping late at night with his wife. This marriage ritual exemplifies a distinctive cultural heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A second pattern, and for us now, a more important pattern, described by both Lockwood and Bringa is the establishment of affinal relations between the bride and groom’s family. To affirm the marriage after an elopement, male members of the groom’s household visit the young woman’s parents a day or two later. This visit is called “mirenje” or “mijer” [in peace] or “prvine” [first visit] in some regions, the purpose being to show respect and make amends for any hard feelings created by the elopement. If the visit establishes a rapport, which it often does but not always, the bride’s parents then visit the groom’s household, where their married daughter now lives. The affinal visit is called “pohode.” The affinal relation called “prijatelji” [friends or friends through in-lawship] is established and what Victor W. Turner (1964) describes as confirmatory ceremonies. Sometimes an elopement and a traditional wedding occurred back to back; after an elopement, a family would quickly put together a wedding ceremony the next day so as to save face and celebrate the marriage. Regardless of whether the marriage is established through an elopement or a traditional wedding, the responsibility to build affinal relations was shared between the families. This is a cultural expectation and social duty. The primary focus of our study is this kinship, and its cultural, social, and historical significance. Although it is critical to talk about the recent experiences of Bosnians during the war from 1992 to 1995, our primary interest is in

4

Introduction

recognizing and acknowledging the importance of this kinship structure and showing its resilience. In contrast to the significance of the traditional Balkan studies that Kaser (1998, 92) reviews, we find that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, “the highest moral level of solidarity, sympathy, and emotional warmth” is exemplified (surprisingly to outsiders) in the affinal kinships established after marriage. Bosnia-Herzegovina was not as nationalistic as other Yugoslav republics, although it suffered the most from nationalism during the recent war. We argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina’s difference vis-à-vis the nationalisms in the other republics of former Yugoslavia is connected to the affinal kinship structure its inhabitants share. POLITICAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY Before beginning, a short account of the contemporary political history within which the study takes place is necessary. The break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in a complex web of collective violence. Unlike other communist countries in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito had been a relatively open society with progressive social values. Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state that consisted of a federation of six republics—Bosnia (officially called Bosnia-Herzegovina), Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Faced with a vituperate Serbian nationalism and the despotic actions of Slobodan Milošević, who took power in the late 1980s, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from federal Yugoslavia in June 1991 (Silber and Little 1996). After these secessions, the movement for independence within Bosnia gained momentum. Bosnia was Yugoslavia’s most multi-ethnic republic composed of forty-four percent Bosniak (Muslim), thirty-one percent Bosnian Serb (Orthodox Serb), and seventeen percent Bosnian Croat (Catholic). Bosniaks were the modal group, but not, as typically implied in the global media, the majority group. Macedonia was also a multi-ethnic republic in Yugoslavia with its Macedonian and Albanian populations. In Serbia, over 200,000 Bosniaks live in the Sandžak region. The people of Bosnia embraced their cultural diversity and thus found themselves increasingly at odds with the nationalism spreading throughout former Yugoslavia. Bosnians had a civil heritage based on the assumption that Bosnia was more than “a collectivity of separate entities . . . [but] a historical entity which has its own identity and its own history” (Banac 1993, 138–139). Nationalist leaders in other republics as well as inside Bosnia sought to create a nation-state based on the antithetical model grounded in the exclusive rights of a freshly and artificially created “majority” group; these



Introduction 5

nationalist leaders realized that they could not establish such a nation-state without first undermining the contrasting and more progressive model. After seeking the counsel of various international organizations, including the United Nations, Bosnian leaders called for a national referendum on the secession question in March 1992. With a voter turnout of sixty-four percent, ninety-eight percent voted in favor of independence. Bosnian Serbs, however, were told to boycott the referendum by their nationalistic leaders. When Bosnia declared itself an independent state, the nationalist party of the Bosnian Serbs, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) (which did not represent all Bosnian Serbs) refused to accept the outcome. Radovan Karadžić, the SDS leader, threatened the extinction of Bosniaks in Bosnian Parliament. With clear premeditation, Serbian militia and the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army stationed within Bosnia attacked unarmed civilians throughout Bosnia. Political forces from Serbia and Montenegro and later from Croatia agitated ethnic communities inside Bosnia to turn against their neighbors, which made the conflict appear to be a “civil war” to outside observers. The goal of the military-political campaign, which came to be known euphemistically as “ethnic cleansing” but was, in fact, genocide, was to partition Bosnia into ethnically homogeneous regions and permanently divide its four and a half million inhabitants who for centuries had lived in blended communities. Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić (the Serbian commander who led this genocide) have each been found guilty of genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Karadžić on March 24, 2016 and Mladić on November 22, 2017. The costs of “ethnic cleansing” were immense for every Bosnian, and Bosniaks felt the most devastating impact of this violence. Despite promises of protection from the United Nations in “safe areas,” the international community failed to stop war crimes in Bosnia and genocide in Srebrenica, as legally determined in a judgment by the United Nations International Court of Justice. Today there is a pariah sensibility among Bosniaks. The sensibility stems not only from the world’s betrayal and the community’s victimization, but also from the world’s lack of historical and objective knowledge of who Bosniaks are. From Croatia and Serbia there are polemics that Bosniaks are not a distinct ethnic group but instead Croats or Serbs (depending upon from where the polemic is launched) who converted to Islam during the four hundred years of Ottoman rule. It was not until 1961 that the Yugoslav census, in which Bosnia was a republic, gave citizens the option “Muslims in the ethnic sense.” Before this option, Bosniaks would declare their ethnic identity as Croat, Serb, or Yugoslav depending on social circumstances or geographical location (Donia and Fine 1994).

6

Introduction

SUMMARY In our study, we will focus on marriage customs and kinship structures where modernization and industrialization have been less evident, not just in rural communities but also in urban areas where many inhabitants from rural communities now live after the war. The strategy is promising as indicated by Robert K. Merton (1941, 361) who reminds us that “In no society is the selection of marriage partner unregulated and indiscriminate.” What normative orientations structure the social conduct of Bosnians as members of an ethnic group as well as members of a national collective? This is the study’s subject. The study examines interrelated marriage customs and kinship structures, namely, elopement (ukrala se) as a transformative ritual and then the culturally prescribed affinal visitations after a marriage (pohode) as a confirmatory ceremony. We also examine the ritual kinship called kumovi (best man, bridesmaid, godfather) and pobre (blood brotherhood) and how these kinships contribute as well to social intimacy and a sense of solidarity in a polyethnic society. In other words, we analyze the authority of kinship and, in doing so, follow the methodological devices of Edward Said (1978). We are looking at the “strategic locations” of different kinship relations. We are also looking at the “strategic formations” of different kinship relations, that is, the relationships between different kinships and the ways in which they “acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large” (Said 1978, 28). We employ a mixed methodology, drawing upon fieldwork (interviews and folklore) and survey data (crosstabs and log-linear analysis). The surveys we designed were carried out and conducted by Mareco Index Bosnia. The survey data, technical reports, SPSS files, and survey questions in English and Bosnian are available at Open ICPSR. Mareco Index Bosnia conducts survey research for universities, embassies, and governmental agencies and is a member of Gallup International. No matter which methodology we employ the purpose is the same, namely, to describe the cultural order of kinship and explain its authority. We collect, analyze and interpret areas of cultural density. We recognize that, on the one hand, some readers might be put off by our use of statistics with a large, representative sample of the population and, on the other hand, some readers may want us to go farther and use regression analysis rather than cross tabulations and log-linear analyses. We, however, choose to leave our categorical variables as what they are—categorical variables. We also recognize that some readers might want us to use only ethnographic data, given its greater depth and nuanced meanings. We, in fact, have an abundance of ethnographic material in our study. We thus ask our readers



Introduction 7

(with contrasting methodological commitments) to be patient, hoping they will trust us as inquirers and read the study as a whole to the end. A word about the narrative. This book is co-authored. To introduce ourselves, Adnan Tufekčić is professor of education at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tuzla. Keith Doubt is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Wittenberg University. Adnan has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Tuzla area and is recognized as a world expert on ethnopedagogy, a relatively new and modern discipline that studies people’s unbringings as a morally guided practice, explicates people’s pedagogical views in everyday life, and addresses the educational practices with the family and community. He has given lectures and published on this subject in Russia, Croatia, and Poland. Keith has published several books on Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of which was translated into Bosnian and published in Sarajevo. They are Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice (Rowman and Littlefield), Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia (Fordham University Press), Sociologija nakon Bosne [Sociology after Bosnia] (Buybook), and Through the Window: Kinship and Elopement in BosniaHerzegovina (Central European University Press). While our training and backgrounds are different, we write with a shared and dialogical voice. Our intellectual and political convictions regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina are interdependent (McHugh, Raffel, Foss, and Blum 1974). We have written a book that is about something that bears vital importance to the society itself, about something that has not been destroyed in the recent war and keeps surviving. Our book is about the implicit culture of Bosnian spiritual space, about that part of authentic living which is the basis of the most intimate and sensitive life experiences and events. Our book is not just about the most intimate and vulnerable components of culture but also about the most resilient elements which cannot be spent through time. Moreover, the book is about that part of a society’s culture that never depends upon the leading political circumstances, that is, on circumstances created by “the political system,” about that part of a society’s culture that, like a snowflake, grows on a piece of ground where snow has melted and finds its place among cruel, artificially made constructions of human society. A lot of dust has fallen on life and culture in Bosnia-Herzegovina, be it ideological or political. We hope to remove some of that dust for those who wish not just to peek at but actually to see that special place called Bosnia. In the first chapter, we begin in a somewhat whimsical manner before moving to an historical and conceptual analysis of what we call authentic syncretism.

Chapter One

Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići

MEDIEVAL FORTRESS IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA We visited Srebrenik Fortress situated on top of a pointed cliff on a mountain side near the provincial town, Srebrenik, an hour’s drive from Tuzla, a city in northeast Bosnia-Herzegovina, located in Southeast Europe. See Figure 1.1. The first mention of the fortress is in an historical document known as the Charter to Dubrovnik dated 1333, in which the Ban of Bosnia Stephen II Kotromanić grants three small cities near Dubrovnik to the muncipality of Dubrovnik in exchange for taxes. Records indicate that Kotromanić occupied the castle till 1353, being a member of the Bosnian Church, a schismatic Christian faith, neither entirely Catholic nor entirely Orthodox, often referred to as Bogomilism, albeit incorrectly (Fine 1975; Lovrenović 2010). The fortress is a testimony to the majesty and mysteriousness of Bosnia’s medieval period. Srebrenik Fortress fell first to the Hungarian army and then later to the Ottoman army. Although the Ottoman army conquered the rest of Bosnia in 1463, the fortress itself did not fall until 1512. Bosnia then became an eyelet in the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years (Malcolm 1996). There are Ottoman tombstones near the fortress on its hillside, and they, too, are a part of this material culture (see Figure 1.2). Local inhabitants say they were the Ottoman soldiers who died fighting to conquer the fortress. There are the broken remains of tombstones of different shapes and various sizes, and local researchers have concluded Bosnian and Hungarian defenders of the fortress are buried there as well alongside the Ottoman tombstones (Tursunović 1997, 43). In 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina as the authority of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans was crumbling. After 9

Figure 1.1.   Srebrenik Fortress on a foggy day. Source: Authors’ original photo.

Figure 1.2.   Tombstone near Srebrenik Fortress. Source: Authors’ original photo.



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 11

World War II, Bosnia-Herzegovina became a republic of socialist Yugoslavia, as did Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Today Srebrenik Fortress is a museum, which few visit given its remoteness. Inside the fortress, we saw a young couple embracing on the fortress wall overlooking the valley below. After walking through the castle with its chamber rooms, gigantic windows, and circular steps, we went to a small village a short distance away. The village is called Upper Srebrenik or Gornji Srebrenik. In the village is a modest mosque, built in the traditional Bosnian style. Next to the mosque is a mausoleum or turbe, the Turkish word for mausoleum. Local inhabitants say the Ottoman nobleman, Sheikh Sinan-baba, is buried in the turbe. There are two slots in the wall, one for money and another for clothes, through which to give alms for good fortune. See Figure 1.3. Around the mosque is a cemetery with tombstones, one being a large, prominent tombstone called Pobro’s tomb. See Figure 1.4. As we stood next to Pobro’s tomb, some youths walking home from school taunted us to leave money. We were not the first to visit this village. In the sixties, Milenko S. Filipović visited the village. An anthology of Filipović’s work, Among the People: Native Yugoslav Ethnography: Selected Writing of Milenko S. Filipović, was edited by E. A. Hammel and published in 1982. Filipović listened to the local folklore from village inhabitants and reported the following legend: Sheikh

Figure 1.3.   Turbe in Gornji Srebrenik. Source: Authors’ original photo.

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Chapter One

Figure 1.4.   Pobro’s tomb in Gornji Srebrenik. Source: Authors’ original photo.

Sinan-baba came and settled in Srebrenik when multitudes of Ottomans and Muslims were forced to flee Hungary in the early 18th century. Upon returning from one of his travels, he passed through several Muslim villages. He, though, was unable to find lodging for the night as each Muslim household refused him. He then came upon the home of an impoverished Orthodox Serb and asked if he could stay for the night. His host said he could, but said he had nothing for his guest to eat. The Sheikh replied he had supper for both of them. After they dined on barley bread, which the Sheikh had in his leather pouch, they became friends, blood brothers or pobratimi. [Pobratim, the singular case, is to pobro as grandmother to grandma or grandfather to granddad.] About this kinship ritual, Jovan Cvijić (1930, 380) writes, “Love of actual blood relations is not enough, and so we find the institutions of pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo in which people outside the family take oaths of adoption as brothers and sisters.” (Cultural anthropologists sometimes call this ritual kinship fictive kinship.) The legend continues this way: Before his death, Sheikh Sinan-baba proclaimed he was not to receive any funeral honors unless such honors were also given to his blood brother. That is, no offering was to be placed in his tomb unless Pobro’s tomb received an offering at the same time. When Pobro died after the Sheikh, he was buried in the Ot-



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 13

toman cemetery. Here is the reason village youths taunted us to leave money not in the mausoleum, as is the religious custom, but on Pobro’s tomb, as is the local custom. The folklore Filipović heard in the sixties is passed down through generations. Of course, the youths could come back after we left and collect the money on the tomb for themselves. This ethnographic recording by Filipović (1965) is not included in the anthology of his writings mentioned above. It was recently translated into English and published in the bilingual, interdisciplinary online journal, Duh Bosne / Spirit of Bosnia, which one of us edits. We draw upon the article not available before in English to strengthen the appreciation of Filipović’s work as a Yugoslav ethnographer. Filipović notes the theophany in the legend where a divine personage encounters inhospitable people who refuse lodging and turn the person away, but then a poor, hospitable person takes in and houses the traveler. Here a poor, Orthodox Serb takes in a wealthy Ottoman Muslim. Filipović said that he heard variations of this legend when visiting neighboring villages, one being the Sheikh had been a native to Mecca and another being pobro converted to Islam. INTERETHNIC KINSHIP AND AUTHENTIC SYNCRETISM The cultural blending exemplified in the legend of Pobro and Sheikh’s tombs celebrates syncretism. “Syncretism calls analytic attention to creative blending rather than the maintenance of cultural distinctions” (Strong 2006, 586). There are some academic issues with the term (Stewart 1999, 40–41). One is syncretism is tacitly viewed as inferior as a cultural phenomenon. Another is syncretism belies the supposed purity of the traditions said to be blended. Two pure traditions become inauthentic, less than what they are, through their mixing. To overcome these issues, we recount the folklore Filipović and we will report as authentic syncretism. We develop the concept through the course of the chapter’s narrative. The stories have persevered through time giving them a diachronic meaning. The cultural blending is celebrated from one generation to another. The retelling of the story gives the tellers and their listeners pleasure, which derives from an understanding of the story’s synchronic meaning, which Filipović formulates as theophany. The cultural blending presupposes not the purity but the incompleteness of the traditions that are blended, Islam and Christianity. Neither tradition is able to constitute itself as what it itself is except in blending with the other. This dialectic is a key aspect of what authentic syncretism is. The hermetically sealed, pure tradition is needy, as it were, needy of the other. Authentic syncretism therefore

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Chapter One

exemplifies a dialectic, a dialectic that is never totalizing. While some argue syncretism represents an epistemological collapse, we argue syncretism exemplifies an epistemological leap (Strong 2006). This leap is not into a metaphysical realm but into a cultural reality infused with pathos and trauma. Consider here Antonio Gramsci’s (1999, 134) powerful statement: “Folklore . . . ought to be studied as a ‘conception of the world’ of particular social strata which are untouched by modern currents of thoughts.” Our approach heeds Gramsci’s advice and focuses on the conception of the world exemplified by this cultural and historical strata inside Bosnia-Herzegovia, untouched by modernist and nationalist currents of thought. At the end of his report, Filipović says something interesting. He learns from his informants that Pobro’s tomb in Upper Srebrenik is not the only such example in the Tuzla area. He reports hearing about something similar in the village of Čekanići, a village some twenty kilometers on the other side of the provincial town Srebrenik. Filipović (1965; 2017) included what he heard from his informants in the sixties about Čekanići while in Gornji Srebrenik, some distance away. Here is the story he reported: A Bosnian Muslim was not able to live to see before his death his friend, his pobratim, who was a Christian living far away in Western Bosnia. He had sent word to his blood-brother to visit him before he died. As the village started to bury the Muslim, pobro arrived after a long journey. As pobro, a Christian, saw his blood brother was already dead, he, too, died at that spot, and the villagers buried the two close friends from different faiths together. The village, local inhabitants say, is named Čekanići, meaning waiting, after the Muslim’s waiting. Filipović, however, was not able to go to Čekanići where he admitted he would have certainly learned more. We thus decided to go to Čekanići ourselves in 2018. “Ritual kinship of various forms was of great importance among South Slavs” (Filipović 1963, 77). South Slavs is inclusive encompassing Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Serbs, and Slovenes. The important feature of blood sisterhood and blood brotherhood is it is contracted freely. The bond is meant to perpetuate an already deep and strong friendship. Vera St. Erlich (1978) pointed out the custom exists in all Yugoslav areas. In a solemn way, two people make a lifelong bond. Sometimes they drink blood, a ritual to affirm their close kinship. Blood brotherhood and blood sisterhood, moreover, is understood as blood kinship and is a barrier to marriage. If a young man and a girl become a brother and a sister (these are exceptional cases), they cannot get married since they have become a brother and sister to each other. In another essay, Filipović (1963, 80) notes that “Such brotherhoods (and sisterhoods) are frequently contracted even at present time by two persons belonging to different nations and faiths.” These interethnic, ritual kinships



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 15

connect people in a pluralistic society in socially significant and culturally meaningful ways, giving solidarity to a heterogeneous community. Given the diversity of Bosnia’s population, there is a greater likelihood of close friendships between people from different faiths. We explore this subject throughout the book. It is this conception of the world that we seek to understand better. POBRO IN ČEKANIĆI We went to Čekanići driving up a narrow, winding road over several hills to the village, situated in a small valley, with approximately one hundred and fifty homes. See Figure 1.5. Prayer was being called and one of us joined the prayer while the other waited. While the other waited, a woman called out to him and told him to sit in a chair she brought outside and placed by the house in the shade. She gave him some juice, as it was a warm day. After prayer, we gathered outside the mosque in its courtyard. See Figure 1.6. They knew we wanted to conduct an interview. While other men sat around and listened, the mutevelija said the following to us: Sheikh Dedo, who is buried in the turbe, was a virtuous man and knew well one man who

Figure 1.5.   Village in Cˇekanic´i. Source: Authors’ original photo.

Figure 1.6.   Mosque and turbe in Cˇekanic´i Source: Authors’ original photo.



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 17

was not from the village. See Figure 1.7. The two of them were not of the same religion. Dedo saw goodness in that man and tested his character in different ways, but he did not actually discuss this with him. The friends visited annually for years. At the end of their days, as they were getting older, they said to one another that whoever died first would not be buried until the other had come to the funeral. Before it was to be the last time for them to see each other, the blood brother visited Dedo. Dedo asked him: “What is going on with you?” “All the worst”—he replied. “But why?”—asked Dedo? “Well, my wife died, I have one daughter and she is to be married soon and so I will be all alone,” replied the man. At that moment, Dedo said something he should not have said, but did anyway. “You kafirs (infidels), the more evil you do, the more an infidel you are.” Dedo made his friend angry with this statement. Pobro said, “Well, my friend, this is not so. I am what you are.” “I ask for your forgiveness.” Dedo then said but continued: “I said it on purpose as you have not wanted to reveal yourself for years; if you are what I am, then you should be beside me.” Dedo died first, and they waited two days for his friend to arrive. At the funeral, when villagers were saying prayer, the blood brother arrived and stood in the back. As they said the final words of the funeral prayer, the blood brother died at that moment. As it happened in this manner, they dug a grave for him as well and buried him beside Dedo. They are together. Pobro was a

Figure 1.7.   Men with dervish after prayer. Source: Authors’ original photo.

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man from Krajina, from the western part of Bosnia, near Bihać. If a person is a good man, he can have a special position before God even if he is of another religion. There are black sheep in every religion. The mutevelija said he heard the story that he shared with us from his grandfathers and older people. He then said, “You can see the mausoleum, why not?” The mutevelija opened the turbe so that we could see the two tombs next to one another inside the turbe, one with a Muslim headstone and one without. See Figure 1.8. As we were departing, two young men pulled up on a motorcycle and asked if they could enter the yard. They approached and put money in the slot of the turbe, crossed themselves, exited, saying thank you, and traveled on together on their motocycle. We then went to the dervish’s home outside the village and had coffee and sweets with his wife and daughters. As we talked, the mutevelija called the dervish at his home on his cell phone and told him that his daughter-in-law had provided a chair and drink for the non-Muslim while he waited during prayer. The dervish said yes, he knew, the man is here and has told me. The mutevelija was proud of his daughterin-law’s hospitality with a stranger and wanted to tell the dervish. Again, we were not the first ones to visit the village. In 2005, Thomas Butler, a Slavic language professor at Harvard University, visited Čekanići with Rusmir Djedović and wrote a short article on his visit, including listening to this legend about Šeh Dedo and pobro that we heard in 2018 and Filipović

Figure 1.8.   Turbe in Cˇekanic´i. Source: Authors’ original photo.

Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 19



Figure 1.9.   Two tombstones, one with Muslim headstone, in turbe. Source: Authors’ original photo.

heard while in Upper Srebrenik in the sixties. Butler (2006, 113), who was fluent in Serbo-Croatian, wrote the following on his visit to Čekanići. I was amazed when I saw the two tombs inside, one with a typical canvascolored gift of clothes and money, and the other without any blankets, but, nevertheless, nicely made-up, as if there also lies an important personality here. [Translated by the authors.]

The repetition of the legend over the decades with visitors reflects the diachronic character of the region’s folklore, celebrating the human beauty in how two people from different faiths were buried together in the turbe to affirm their spiritual friendship. See Figure 1.9. FOUCAULT’S HETEROTOPIA We now draw upon Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia, a term that describes spaces where layers of meaning are presented, denied, inverted, and

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twisted. Foucault’s theorizing recounts the functions of syncretism captured in this folklore, which supports as well the more traditional formulations of folklore’s functions in society. The turbe in Čekanići is a heterotopia, reflecting different layers of meaning in one space, where a Muslim and an Orthodox Christian are buried together inside the turbe. The mausoleum encapsulates one space away from time and other places. The mausoleum, of course, exists in time and space as any other place exists in time and space. At the same time, the mausoleum’s space exists outside of time and other spaces. “Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias” (Foucault 1986, 24). The mausoleum is a heterotopia in time. The villagers narrate their folklore from one generation to the next and protect the turbe so as to make their turbe and the cultural order it represents invulnerable to the cruelty of history. The village inhabitants, in other words, protect the space and its material culture against the ravages of time. No armies approached this village during World War I, World War II, or the ethnic-inflamed violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. The village, inhabitants believe, is protected and guarded by the spirit of the turbe toward which they are piously devoted. The mutevelija said that during the recent war, a van full of dervishes came and shouted at them: “Fear not the war.” He also said, “I myself was there on the top of that hill above the village at that last house during the war, and I was standing in the garden. A plane came and it circled around the minaret several times. I thought it would demolish the mosque, but it did not and went away.” While the mausoleum is not an open public space, it is accessible. The young men who unexpectedly visited on their motocycle asked the dervish for permission to enter the mosque’s yard. Upon approaching the turbe, one gives alms and says a petition. Entry requires special rituals. Before entering the turbe, we took off our shoes as we would upon entering a mosque. When a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf was praying at the turbe’s window as if speaking directly to the personages in the turbe, we quietly walked by her. After finishing her petitions, she turned, smiled, and waved to us like a young girl. The mausoleum is a heterotopia of ritual. The heterotopia in Čekanići also has functions in relation to other spaces in society, and these are important to recognize. Foucault formulates these functions as opposing each other. One is to create a space of illusion. The love existing in the blood brotherhood, in the interethnic friendship, feels like an illusion to those holding biases against members of other ethnic groups. This space unites what for those with such biases is un-unifiable. As the mutevelija said, “If a person is a good man, he can have a special position before God even if he is of another religion. There are black sheep in every religion.”



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 21

The legend, that is, links the possible with the unlikely. While the legend says this happened somewhere in time and space, the time and space where it happened feels like nowhere in time and space. Commenting on the social and political consequences of the recent war, Ugo Vlaisavljević (2002, 206) writes, “Ethno-nationalism became more attractive to the masses as it proved to be just as capable as its predecessor of drawing on the strongest cards: the axis of the ethnic name, mithomoteurs of the ethnic tradition.” Svetlana Broz (2004) provides strong counter examples to the bias of ethno-nationalism. Her book, Good People in an Evil Time, shares testimonies where during the evil time of war, people in Bosnia-Herzegovina acted with goodwill, interpersonal courage, and mutual trust toward members of other ethnic groups. People remained committed to their relations with neighbors and friends even as the Yugoslav state, of which Bosnia-Herzegovina was a central part and a civic model for other Yugoslavs, collapsed. An immense and significant minority from each side of the war offered timely support, safety, understanding, and goodwill to neighbors from other communities in distress and need. While the truism in this folklore in Čekanići reflects a political illusion for some, it depicts a social reality for others. Miming Gramsci’s earlier point, Foucault (1986, 22) writes, “One could perhaps say that certain ideological conflicts animating present-day polemics oppose the pious descendants of time and the determined inhabitants of space.” The contrasting function of the turbe is compensation. The mausoleum creates a real space just as a mirror creates a real space. Much as the mirror in which we see ourselves is an actual space, the turbe is an actual space. Foucault (1986, 24) writes, “The mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there.” The function of the turbe is similar. Visitors see themselves in the mirror. Visitors then look back at themselves in the space where they actually are, discover their absence (given their presence in the mirror), and thereby reconstitute themselves. The turbe makes the space visitors occupy when they look at themselves through the mirror, on the one hand, absolutely real (connected with the here and now in all its concretness) and, on the other hand, absolutely unreal, since, to be perceived, the visitors have to pass through and enter this virtual space, which is the mausoleum over there. Death, of course, is an essential aspect of the mausoleum, and death functions for humanity in the same way as Foucault’s mirror. When gazing at death, at our mortality, we discover an absence on our part from the place where we are, from where we live. We are over there rather than over here, even though it is from over here that we are over there. Like the mirror, death provides an actual space, it exists, and when looking at it, we discover our

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absence from life, from where we live. We reconstitute ourselves. In this sense, death, like the mirror, exists in reality, and “it exerts a sort of counteraction on life” (Foucault 1986, 24). It, too, is life. The functions of illusion and compensation have a didactic character. Alan Dundes, the well-known folklorist, theorizes the twin functions of illusion and compensation in folklore, which we draw out from Foucault’s work: “Folklore reflects (and thereby reinforces) the value configurations of the fold, but at the same time folkore provides a sanctioned form of escape from these very same values” (2007, 59). The cultural blending Filipović and we describe presupposes not the purity but the incompleteness of the traditions that are blended. Dedo and his pobro quarreled. “You kafirs (infidels), the more evil you do, the more an infidel you are.” The idealism of the normative orientation governing blood brotherhood is blood brothers do not quarrel: Brothers quarrel, blood brothers never (Erlich 1978). Their entire life they are called to be mutually supportive without arguing, which demonstrates the pure love they have for each other. The quarrel in the folk story exemplifies the incompleteness of a tradition, the failure to be absolute. Given its nonabsolute character, tradition is able to constitute itself as what it itself truly is only through blending with the other. The quarrel moves us to a deeper understanding. Rather than exemplify an epistemological collapse, the folklore’s syncretism exemplifies an epistemological leap (Strong 2006). This dialectic is a key part of authentic syncretism. Each tradition is needy, in the liminal space that is syncretism, needy of the other. This need, moreover, must be not just demonstrated, but enacted. “To the extent to which folklore contrasts with the accepted norms and offers socially acceptable forms of release through amusement or humor through creative imagination and fantasy, it tends to preserve the institutions from direct attack and change” (Bascom 1954, 349). Here is the function of compensation, achieved through a nonacademic dialectical process. ALJAMIADO OR ALJAMÍA LITERATURE After stepping out of the turbe in Čekanići, the dervish who was with us pointed out an epitaph on one of the gravestones. It was written in the PersoArabic script. One of us who could read Arabic read the inscription noting that the script contained both Arabic words and the spoken language of Bosnian inhabitants. See Figure 1.10. This form of writing is known as Arebica where the spoken speech (once called Serbo-Croatian but now called by three national identities, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, as if, after the war that ended in 1995, it suddenly became three different languages) is written with

Figure 1.10.   Tombstone near turbe in Cˇekanic´i. Source: Authors’ original photo.

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the Perso-Arabic script of the Ottoman Empire, a literary rich and creative Oriental language. During Ottoman rule, there was a need for Bosnian writers and poets to create works in their own Bosnian language. As early as in the fifteenth century, authors wrote in Perso-Arabic script but using the Bosnian spoken language. This language is given the name Lisani Bosnevi (Bosnian language). The phenomenon of Aljamiado literature is important due to its role in the preservation of the language and identity of Bosniaks within the Ottoman Empire. While Aljamiado literature existed in other countries, that is, other native languages were also written with Arabic script, in Bosnia Aljamiado literature developed into a literary canon and was widespread. While there are variations of Arebica script (that is, variations in terms of the form of single letters from author to author and from time to time), Arebica retained its own name, regardless in which way authors were adjusting the letters of Oriental languages to the phonetic structure of the Bosnian language. Mehmed Džemaludin Čaušević in the late 19th century established the definitive version of the Arebica, after which many books and journals were published in Arebica. Later these publications started to reappear in the Latin alphabet, and some Bosniaks, who had been quite literate, became illiterate. During the Ottoman rule, women poets in Bosnia, who did not know Oriental languages, wrote in their mother tongue but with the Arabic alphabet. Umihana Čuvidina, a Bosnian poet during the Ottoman era, sang her poetry, contributing to the development of Bosnian folk music. There are grandparents today who recite poems to their grandchildren that they learned thanks to Arebica in that they did not learn the poems from another alphabet. The significance of Aljamiado literature is that the affinity between Bosnia’s inhabitants and Islam “allowed for the eventual merging of speech and writing—‘own’ speech and ‘foreign’ writing” (Moranjak-Bamburać 2001, 13). The Alhamiado literature itself is precisely an orginal syncretic phenomenon, which has arisen by borrowing from two different chains: the chain of migrations of “nomadic speech” and a long chain of transformation of another kind, whose original impulse, perhaps has been in the spiritual component of mysterous signs that only then really introduced a fictious voice from heaven. Could these “dancing letters” open a place of “visibility” of the sacral in the popular consciousness, where the connection between the concept and belief arises as much from the irrational as from the rational? (Moranjak-Bamburać 2001, 14).

What we frame as authentic syncreticism embodies not a divine epiphany with metaphysical import. What we frame as authentic syncreticism embodies a heretical epiphany. It, if one will, dances its epiphany, confident that its heretical epiphany is more human, even if irrational, than the divine epiphany



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 25

embodied statically and rationally by a pure tradition. The heretical epiphany seizes for itself the mantle of authenicity, throwing suspicion on the imputed absoluteness of a supposedly pure tradition. Authentic syncreticism unties the knot of cultural mixture without undoing the knot that is a cultural reality. Foucault (1986, 23) explains this point well: “We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.” Here Foucault articulates the truism inherent in authentic syncreticism. Shades of faith are not reduciable to one another, nor do they superimpose on one another. Moranjak-Bamburać (2001) describes how the paradigm of the crossroads has become an attractive trope used to interpret the nature of identity in the Bosnian space. Bosnia is depicted by her friends as well as her enemies as a crossroads of cultures, faiths, identities, ideologies, epochs, and historic interests. According to Moranjak-Bamburać, this privileged trope lacks character and legitimacy as an explantory concept and a discursive tool because it displaces what it purports to represent, rendering its subject inauthentic or simply invisible. The trope of crossroads of cultures, while highly favored and politically privileged, dilutes the dialectic of authentic syncreticism, to which Foucault draws our attention. SUMMARY To bring this chapter to a close, we give more examples of authentic syncreticism. In the Balkans, Bosnians are known for a clever, self-depreciating sense of humor. During the darkest moments of the war, Bosnians created jokes that flashed with penetrating rays of truth and pleasure during the most dishonest and painful of times; that is, they flashed with heretical rather than divine epiphanies. They danced. Their convictions arose from the irrational rather than the rational. To give an example of such a joke: A man from Bosnia and a man from Japan were talking about priorities in life. The man from Japan said: For me, Japan is first, then my job, and then comes the family. The person from Bosnia said: For me, it is the opposite, first comes my family, then my job, and then comes Japan. The joke captures an absent subject, Bosnia, as nevertheless present in its absence. The joke is a protest against the cruel, political course of the world; it reflects something deep about the society’s character. Humor is a window into a society’s soul for outsiders and a mirror to see and celebrate a shared identity for insiders. As we were driving back to Tuzla, we stopped at a third turbe in a Catholic village between Srebrenik and Tuzla named Čanići. While the name Čanići

Figure 1.11.   Turbe in Cˇanic´i with Catholic church. Source: Authors’ original photo.



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 27

may seem similiar to Čekanići, it is a different village. Below the Catholic church on a hill is a small turbe like the others we have discussed. See Figure 1.11. It was evening, and we saw candles flickering by the turbe’s door. These candles were not lit by Muslims because it is not part of their spiritual practice. These candles were lit by Catholics who came to the turbe door with petitions. We saw a man approach the turbe and offer a winter coat as an alm through the slot in the door that was not quite big enough. He walked backwards carefully and reverently taking four or five slow steps. On top of a short tombstone near the turbe, we saw coins people had left. See Figure 1.12. There is no known story in Čanići regarding who is buried in the turbe, nor whether there is a blood brotherhood buried near and connected with the turbe that would compare to previous stories from Gornji Srebrenik and Čekanići. Nevertheless, the custom of leaving coins on a tombstone near the turbe rather than in the turbe mines the sentiment of the stories from the nearby villages. There, though, is one story about this turbe local inhabitants enjoy narrating through time. During the Yugoslav period after World War II, a railroad was being built close to the turbe. Some modern-minded Communistic officials wanted to tear down the turbe as the railroad was being built nearby. The political goal was to erase backward, primitive cultures in the region. A local Catholic priest, however, stood in front of the turbe and refused to let

Figure 1.12.   Grave in Cˇanic´i with coins. Source: Authors’ original photo.

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them destroy it. He insisted the space was a holy place, and he would not allow Communist officials to tear it down. This folklore about a Catholic priest who defended the sancity of the Ottoman turbe is another example of what we have called authentic syncreticism. Its heretical epiphany trumps the divine epiphany of dogma, whether that be modern or religious. “The state has its own conceptions of life and it strives to disseminate it: this is its task and duty. This dissemination does not take place on a tabula rasa; it competes and clashes with, for ex., folklore and ‘must’ overcome it” (Gramsci 1999, 135). Gramsci’s truism regarding the clash between the modern state and folk culture is painfully real for the inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The priest stood up to the Communist conception of life, not to defend Catholicism but to defend the heritage of authentic syncreticism. When driving by Čanići the day before Bajram, the religious holiday celebrated by Muslims to mark the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, one of us stopped with his daughter, Zuhra. The turbe’s windows and porch were lit in the early evening with many candles. See Figure 1.13. The scene was beautiful both asthestically and culturally, making one of us sad and nostalgic, lamenting the loss of the syncretic tradition the image exemplified. An elder Catholic woman approached the Muslim man and asked, “What about

Figure 1.13.   Turbe at dusk before Bajram with candles. Source: Authors’ original photo.



Authentic Syncretism in Čekanići 29

you? You look like a sad man. If you have problems, do not worry. At this place is a holy man. Pray. It will be good for you.” The exchange honored the syncreticism of multiple traditions. At the turbe, Zuhra asked, “Why are you crying?” The answer she heard was because this is Bosnia. In the next chapter, we turn to a discussion of affinities as another way to demonstrate through Bosnia’s kinship culture what Bosnia is.

Chapter Two

On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina

There is a joke one of us heard while visiting family in the United States1. It went this way: What is the difference between in-laws and out-laws? The answer is, out-laws are wanted. The joke echoes a well-established anthropological finding, namely, that “Hostility to affines is axiomatic” (Sahlins 2011, 236). Affines lack status. More often than not, they are maligned. The joke, though, would not work in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The correct answer, as this chapter will show, would be in-laws are wanted. This part of Bosnian culture is pushed aside in academic and political discussions, but we will argue that it is important to acknowledge and understand the cultural significance of affines and its cultural order in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Affines usually receive secondary or indirect attention. The focus instead is on consanguineal kin in anthropological studies of kinship. For example, Ruth Busch points out, “Connections by marriage are subordinate to consanguineal relations” (Busch 1972, 130–31). Note the word connections instead of relations. Note the word subordinate. Busch, moreover, defines affines as “nonconsanguineal kin”; affinity is defined in terms of what it is not rather than in terms of what it is. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is different. Kinship by marriage has social organization, cultural prestige, ethical importance, and historical precedent (Donia and Lockwood 1978; Bringa 1995; Lockwood 1975). Affinity has substance and character on its own terms. Marriage is the joining of not just two individuals, but two families. Two families merge to support the newlyweds, extend their social networks, and build their social capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Rather than study how affines influence spousal selection and the structure of marriage, we examine how marriage frames the structure of affinity (see Apostolou 2015). 31

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The kin universe, conceptually and empirically, contains “an almost infinite number of knowable kin” (Schneider and Cottrell 1975, 9). A kind of folklore on our human origins is that one could hypothetically count back to Adam and Eve. The culture bearers of this myth are not only Hebrews, but also Christians and Muslims, even non-believers, reflecting a monogenesis understanding of humanity. We thus are drawing attention to this myth for analytical rather than empirical or historical reasons. In this terministic screen, to use Kenneth Burke’s terms (1989), there is an end point, a mythical beginning, in human genealogy. In this frame, humanity has one descent line rather than many, and every human being is a member of the one descent line traced back to Adam and Eve. The argument, of course, is what Weber would call an ideal type, which both abstracts from reality and helps us understand reality (Weber 1947, 89–94). While some anthropologists question the utility of ideal types in anthropological inquiry, we find this ideal type useful for providing a context to understand what affinity means in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Foster 1953, 161). Kinship may be analyzed at three different levels, each being objective in a particular way (Schneider and Cottrell 1975). First, there is the pure kinship system which, in theory, is infinite and, by default, uncountable. Discovering one’s genealogy through DNA testing measures one’s pure kinship system scientifically. One detects kin from afar and unexpected places. Second, there is the normative kinship system, that is, the customs, the rules, and the laws that structure kinship as an oriented social action and a collective social action. Rules regarding endogamy and exogamy, for example, guide the conduct of marriage. “A person cannot do just what he pleases. The positive aspect of prohibition is to initiate organization” (Levi-Strauss 1969, 43). Third, there is the behavioral system, the actual conduct that exemplifies kinship and what kinship involves. Cultural customs such as gift gifting at weddings, birthdays, or funerals are examples (Schneider and Cottrell 1975). Each level of analysis, of course, is just that, analytical, and any one example may be viewed at any level. While Schneider’s functionalist argument is no longer popular in anthropology, we find it helpful in describing the parameters of our study. The focus of this study is not the pure kinship system of which affines are a part, but both the normative kinship system and the behavioral system that make affinal relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina culturally significant. Kinship by marriage needs to be achieved and enacted in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The relationship is “not automatically established upon marriage but has to be confirmed and strengthened through gift-exchange and reciprocal visits” (Bringa 1995, 136). The reciprocal visits are binding and follow a respectful behavior pattern. All known relatives of the son-in-law and daughter-



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 33

in-law are called prijatelji, a word with two distinct meanings referring, on the one hand, to affinal kin and, on the other hand, to friendship itself. In turn, all ego’s affines and agnates are prijatelji to the son-in-law and daughter-inlaw. Marriage in this manner increases ego’s universe of kin. If a couple divorces, the relations established through marriage end as well (Ambert 1988). Traditionally, the husband’s relatives first visit the wife’s family and then the wife’s family visits the husband’s. The pattern repeats itself, and the visits are obligatory. Gifts are exchanged aiming for a sense of reciprocity and inclusiveness (Bringa 1995, 135). Food is shared for a common meal where “sharing food is an act of inclusion and symbolizes social intimacy” (Bringa 1995, 140). More strongly, “sharing food in someone’s household is a symbolic act of kinship” (Bringa 1995, 140). This kinship custom is shared among the three major ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina in parallel ways. To repeat, the three major ethnic groups in the Bosnia-Herzegovina are named in various ways for political and historical reasons: One ethnic group is Muslim, Bosnian Muslim, or Bosniak (spelled Bošnjak in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language, the current academic way of referring to the language widely used in former Yugoslavia and before the war from 1992 to 1995 called Serbo-Croatian); another ethnic group is Croat, Bosnian Catholic, or Bosnian Croat; and another ethnic group is Serb, Serbian Orthodox, Bosnian Orthodox, Orthodox, or Bosnian Serb. This study follows current usage and employs the commonly used terms Bosniak, Croat, and Serb. All three ethnic groups are inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina and may be called Bosnians, although ethnic nationalists and even current politicians spurn this national identity. A significant proportion of Bosnians have kin in different ethnic groups. No longer is the term Yugoslav used as an ethnic or a national identity as it was a few decades ago (Sekulić, Massey and Hodson 1994). Bosnian Jews and Bosnian Roma are small but notable minority groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We return to the shared code of behavior in a polyethnic society with respect to affines. Among Bosniaks, the first visits between in-laws are traditionally called pohode. The visits are obligatory. Pohode could be velike pohode (big) or male pohode (small). When it is male pohode, only the parents, the bride, and bridegroom are in attendance. When it is velike pohode, the parents’ numerous relatives go in pohode. The number of persons who go in pohode from the bride’s side is usually somewhat bigger because it is believed to increase good fortune (nafaku) for the young married couple. Among Bosnian Croats, after a wedding party, the new bride goes to visit her parents, and the first visit traditionally occurs on a religious holiday. The first time the new wife goes to visit her parents she does not go alone; she goes to her parents with her husband, her husband’s father and mother,

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and sometimes cousins and neighbors. The visit initiates the formation of prijatelji. Among Bosnian Serbs, when the married woman goes to visit her parents the first time after getting married, the visit is traditionally called prvine (išla u prvine). The new wife goes with either just married women, her husband’s parents, her sister-in-law, her husband’s uncle, or some other relatives. The new wife does not go to visit her parents after getting married with her husband, who stays at their home. Everyone who does prvine spends the night in the home of the married woman’s parents. The next day, the relatives of the married woman gather in her parents’ home and meet with the husband’s parents and his other relatives. After that, the parents and relatives of the married women will go to visit the husband’s parents’ home. It is believed that the number of the wife’s relatives who go in the first visit to the husband’s parents’ home must be greater than the number of the husband’s relatives who go on their first visit to the wife’s parents’ home; this brings a good omen to the newly married couple. When marriages are trans-ethnic, families also establish affinal relations. While affinal kinship with another ethnic group may be uncomfortable in traditional families, during the Yugoslav period, it was common, particularly in Tuzla, a city in northeast Bosnia-Herzegovina known for the closeness of its multi-ethnic inhabitants. A historical heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina supported a modern, national identity and its political and cultural reality, namely, Yugoslavism. It is sometimes said Bosnians were the best Yugoslavs, and collectively they resisted the demise of Yugoslavia with more conviction than their fellow citizens in other republics. The importance of affines in ego’s universe of kin is not unique to BosniaHerzegovina. Consider findings from an ethnography of second-generation Japanese-Americans in view of the earlier discussion of Schneider’s work on kinship. [They] differ from Schneider’s informants only with regard to their treatment of a category of affinal kin . . . This is the category of ego’s consanguine’s affine’s consanguines, which Cottrell and Schneider refer to as C.A.C. kin. . . . Among Schneider’s informants, C.A.C. kin (and more distant affines such as C.A.C.A. kin and its reciprocal, A.C.A.C. kin) appear only erratically within the meaning of the word “relative” . . . In contrast, my Nisei informants commonly listed C.A.C. kin as relatives. (Yanagisako 1978, 17)

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, all members in the category C.A.C. are prijatelji in as far as they come to know of each other. The trick is to come to know each other. Relations are developed through frequent visiting, family intimacies, and social interactions, all of which entail the work of learning of



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 35

one’s relatives, that is, expanding one’s universe of relations. This process is called oroditi se, meaning to nurture with social care and tact one’s kin by marriage. In Belgrade, with its cosmopolitan culture, the word may be used to describe the intimacy created by gregarious acquaintances in a café after a long conversation. DEFICIENCY IN PREVIOUS STUDIES OF BALKAN KINSHIP As mentioned, classical studies of Balkan kinship overlook the significance of affinal relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we seek to fill this gap in the literature. The kinship custom is ignored either because of misleading or inadequate education or because of conflicting political agendas. The work of the cultural geographer Jovan Cvijić, exemplifying a Serbian orientation, and the sociologist Dinko Tomašić, exemplifying a Croatian orientation, assume the position of “other” to the other, creating a polemic (Kaser 1998). Neither Cvijić nor Tomašić, however, mention or acknowledge the importance of affinal kinship in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a South Slavic country sandwiched between Croatia and Serbia (Tomašić 1942, 1945; 1948; 1954; Cvijić 1930; 1931a; 1931b). Both focus instead on the cultural importance of agnatic kinship and its patriarchal structure. In a language study, “Serbo-Croatian Kinship Terminology,” Eugene A. Hammel likewise delimits his study when he writes, “No affinal terms have been included. The method of classifying affines is rather different from that of classifying consanguineal relatives and is not dealt with here” (1957, 46). Our study includes these affinal terms because in Bosnia-Herzegovina they are important for understanding kinship. In a parallel fashion to Hammel’s short study, we list the terms for different affines, preserving their difference as an important difference. A summary is provided in Appendix A. Punac is a husband’s father-in-law or a wife’s father. Punica is a husband’s mother-inlaw or a wife’s mother. Svekar is a wife’s father-in-law or a husband’s father. Svekrva is a wife’s mother-in-law or a husband’s mother. Ujak or dajdža is the brother of one’s mother. Ujna or dajdžinica is his wife. Stric or amidža is the brother of one’s father. Strina or amidžinica is his wife. Zet is the husband of a daughter or a sister, that is, the husband of one’s sister. Snaha is the wife of a son or a brother, that is, the wife of one’s brother. Zaova is the sister of one’s husband. Svastika is the sister of one’s wife. Djever is the brother of one’s husband. Jetrva is his wife. Bratić is the son of a brother, and sestrić the son of a sister. Bratična/bratišna is the daughter of a brother, and sestrična/ sestrišna is the daughter of a sister.

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To continue, prija is the mother of one’s son-in-law or daughter-in-law. Prika/prijatelj is the father of one’s son-in-law or daughter-in-law. A woman in Tuzla living for two years with her boyfriend reported her mother and her boyfriend’s mother often talk together, and when they do they playfully refer to each other as prija. They use the term with fondness, intimacy, and irony. If the couple, before marrying, breaks off their relation, the parents may say to each other: Ne bi nam suđeno da budemo prije, which means “We have not been destined to be prije.” Dajdža, dajdžinica, amidža, and amidžinica, Arabic, not Turkish words, are most commonly used by Bosniaks, but in rural areas Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs can also be heard to use the words to refer to their relatives. The language is fluid despite nationalist sentiments that it is not. In turn, Bosniaks can also be heard to use the words to refer to their relatives that Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs use. When visiting with Bosniaks in community centers in Pendik and Bursa, Turkey, informants reported that the above Serbo-Croat words to refer to their affines (punac for a husband’s father-inlaw, punica for a husband’s mother-in-law, svekar for a wife’s father-in-law, and svekrva for a wife’s mother-in-law) are used in everyday discourse inside their homes in Turkey where they speak Serbian as their second language after Turkish their primary language. The language is referred to as Serbian in these communities because the communities were purged from Serbia, in particular, in the Sanđak region. No matter which ethnic group South Slav people belong to, whether living in the Balkans or Turkey, they use these words for affinal kin in everyday life and in a normative fashion. While there is some variation in the actual words used, there is not variation in the fact that the words are used in social interactions between families and affinal kin (Doubt 2014, 89–96; Voloder 2018). In Turkey, it is estimated that there are five million Balkan Muslims, likely many more, who during various oppressive historical periods in the past one hundred years fled and immigrated to Turkey (Çaǧaptay 2006). This immigrant group carried with them kinship customs that are not Turkish and are still retained (Voloder 2018). The category of ego’s consanguine’s affine’s consanguines is known in Bosnia-Herzegovnia as prijatelji. Prijatelji, though, are different from tazbina, which refers only to the husband’s in-laws or husband’s wife’s family. Prijatelji refer to the husband as well as the wife’s in-laws. The incorporation is inclusive; no one lacks legitimacy. When a son or daughter marries, one cannot choose which members of the category C.A.C. are or are not one’s relatives. A Bosnian woman in Foča reported her father opposed her marriage to her husband (she decided to elope) because her father did not want her husband’s mother for his prija, a term for a daughter-in-law or son-in-law’s



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 37

mother. The father could not stand the thought of this woman being his prija, of using the word to greet her. It involved social expectations and obligations he did not want to assume. Her husband’s mother was a very strong willed woman. The obligations of the cultural order structuring affinal relations as a behavioral system are acknowledged in the father’s objection to the marriage. When, after the woman’s elopement with her husband, the families celebrated together as is the custom in Bosnia, her father drank so much her husband had to hold him at the window as he became ill. In jest, her mother called out, “Be careful not to throw him out the window!” Since the recent war, religious holidays, whether Christmas, Easter, Iftar, Ramadan, or Eid, have become occasions for prijatelji to gather, and in Sarajevo prijatelji from different faiths are invited to their respective holiday gatherings. Given the destruction of communities euphemistically called ethnic cleansing and the forced migrations of close to half of the population, this process called oroditi se is crucial, necessary, and difficult for sustaining a sense of solidarity in the community in an otherwise anomic social situation. Given the uncountable deaths that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina not only in the nineties but throughout the country’s tumultuous history, this process is essential to sustaining a sense of community in social life. After the loss of agnatic kin after a violent pogrom, affinal kin become more important, if not imperative, for sustaining connections and familial ties. “People treat affines as biological kin rather than as unrelated friends because in-laws share with ego a common genetic interest in future generations” (Burton-Chellew and Dunbar 2011, 745). After having suffered genocide, Bosniak families in refugee camps who were forced to flee their home after having suffered unconscionable violence, regained confidence and hope when they reconnected with prijatelji in refugee camps or settlements in which they were moved. Reuniting with prijatelji showed families they were not utterly without resources after suffering the destruction of their homes and community and the deaths of many family members (Bećirević 2014). The social capital of affinal kin became all they had left that was of value after suffering immeasurable harm (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992). In his study of affinity during the early Middle Ages in Europe, the historian Georges Duby (1994, 3) describes the social principle behind this cultural heritage that is preserved today in Bosnia-Herzegovina in Southeast Europe. Like all living organisms, human societies have a basic impulse which compels them to perpetuate their existence and to reproduce themselves within stable structures. The permanent character of such structures within human societies is instituted jointly by nature and by nurture. For what matters is the reproduction not only of individuals but also of the cultural system which unites them and orders their relations.

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The custom of sustaining close affines in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a direct remnant of this specific historical heritage from the early Middle Ages in Europe (Herlihy 2004). The feudal era lingered in Bosnia-Herzegovina not only during the Ottoman Empire but also during the Austro-Hungarian period up to the early 20th century in contrast to the rest of Europe where modernization and industrialization dramatically changed societies. This cultural heritage that has lingered in Bosnia-Herzegovina is a centerboard providing stability to a polyethnic society. While economic factors and utilitarian concerns give motivation and context to the establishment of prijatelji, the explanation for these kinship patterns is not reducible to economic factors or utilitarian concerns. The amity exemplified is achieved rather than ascribed, but what is achieved is, in a way, ordained, given the cultural order that encircles the relations (Fortes 1969; Bloch 1975). The constraints of morality thus precede the constraints of economics, their purpose being to perpetuate community through a stable cultural order. REPRESENTATIVE NATIONAL SURVEY The cultural anthropologists William Lockwood (1975) and Tone Bringa (1995) conducted their ethnographies in Bosnia-Herzegovina focusing on Bosniaks in two different villages in central Bosnia. Their ethnographies have depth and character; they, though, are restricted to the two villages studied. Do the findings on the importance of prijatelji extend to inhabitants and regions throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina? What is the variation among different social demographics? How important is affinity after the war from 1992 to 1995 more than twenty years later? Is there a collective identity exemplified in this kinship heritage? Is this collective identity the basis of a national identity vis-à-vis the ethno politics that now dominates Bosnia-Herzegovina? To answer these questions we share the results of a survey conducted on this subject. We ask those readers who are loyal to qualitative methodology to bear with us. To be clear, this survey research is descriptive. We do not employ inferential statistics or complex statistical tests. Nor do we analyze variables as dependent and independent as if looking for a causal explanation, as is done in experimental research. We employ the chi-square test to identify statistically significant variations vis-à-vis their social significance. Social significance without statistical significance carries the same weight as social significance with statistical significance. We seek what Max Weber (1947, 99) calls meaningfully ad-



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 39

equate explanations rather than causally adequate explanations. As Weber has sagely pointed out, “If adequacy in respect to meaning is lacking, then no matter how high the degree of uniformity and how precisely its probability can be numerically determined, it is still an incomprehensible statistical probability” (1947, 99). In a survey written by one of us carried out by Mareco Index in 2017, people married and over the age of eighteen were asked whether affinal kinship was maintained after marriage. Mareco Index Bosnia conducts survey research for universities, embassies, and governmental agencies and is a member of Gallup International. A stratified, cluster, random sample of 2,500 inhabitants was drawn from the population, including the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, a random selection of cantons, and rural and urban populations. The technical report from Mareco Index on sampling design and interview protocols, data in an SPSS file, and the question in English and Bosnian are available at Open ICPSR at “Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2017.” The sampling followed the random route technique for selecting households for face-to-face interviews. The technique of nearest birthday was used to select an individual within the household for participation. In other survey studies, individuals in a household are sometimes selected through the use of a Kish grid. A stipulation of the Kish grid is that the people within a household are numbered from youngest to oldest. This is problematic for a study on marriage customs because it gives younger people a slightly higher chance of being chosen. Additionally, the Kish grid method raises concerns about influencing non-responses due to its invasive nature. (It is understandable why a parent may not wish to reveal the number of children and age of children within a home to a stranger.) Thus, this study instead utilized the technique of nearest birthday to select an individual within the household for participation. The question asked in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian was: Do visitations involving the wife and the husband’s parents together occur ten or more times a year? To be precise, the question does not ask whether there are visits to the wife’s parents or whether there are visits to the husband’s parents; instead, the question asks whether the wife and husband’s parents visit each other ten or more times a year. To this question, 62.5% of the 1,766 respondents (excluding those who were never married), answered yes, indicating the behavioral system that exemplifies affinal kinship exists and is socially significant. What then is the variation among different social demographics throughout the entire country of Bosnia-Herzegovina?

Chapter Two

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SURVEY RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Marital Status Marital status was split into three groups: married, divorced, and widowed. Of those married, 64.2% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of those divorced, 36.8%; and of those widowed, 64.2% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. The proportion of respondents who are widowed reporting ten or more affinal visitations a year is the same as respondents who are married, indicating that for more than a majority affinity is sustained after a spouse’s death as social support. If a marriage ends in divorce, affines relinquish their relations. Prijatelji visit less frequently if at all because the reason for the visits no longer exists, the purpose being to support the marriage (Ambert 1988). The results indicate a statistically significant association between martial status and affinal visitations, X2 (2, N = 1104) = 31.84, p < .001. Traditional Wedding The traditional wedding (svadba) is culturally different from a religious wedding ceremony in a church or mosque. “The svadba . . . combines the folk customs and celebration ritual for a marriage and . . . has always been observed with much eagerness, liveliness, music, and the participation of a large number of guests” (Filipović 1982b, 163). The marriage customs of traditional wedding and affinal visitations complement each other as marriage rituals. Of respondents who had a traditional wedding ceremony, 65% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Of the respondents who did not have a traditional wedding ceremony, 56.5% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Affinal visitations are positively associated with traditional wedding feasts, X2 (2, N = 1104) = 11.04, p < .001. Elopement Elopements (ukrala se, meaning the young woman stole herself from her natal home into marriage) have been previously studied in Bosnia-Herzegovina. One of the earliest is Anton Hangi’s (2009) ethnography, Život i običaji muslimana u BiH [The Life and Customs of Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina], written before 1900. Elopement is different from a bride abduction, called otmica. Bride abduction is when a girl is kidnapped unwillingly into marriage. Coercion and violence are used. It is rape. One question in the survey, in fact, asked whether you were stolen against your will into marriage or did you steal your spouse against her will into marriage [Mlada je ukradena od nekog



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 41

zbog braka ili oteta (odvedena u brak)]. To this question, 5.4% answered yes (n = 95). Unlike bride theft (otmica), elopement (ukrala se) occurs with the complicity of the girl and without her parents’ knowledge or, at least, their overt knowledge. The girl chooses to whom she will give herself in marriage, perhaps rebelling against her parents. The choice, however, is not made in a vacuum but within a social context that both constrains and provides incentives to the social conduct (Bringa 1995; Doubt 2012; 2014; Lockwood 1974). One question in the survey asked whether the bride stole herself into marriage (a reflexive verb is used to describe elopement), leaving without knowledge of her parents. [Mlada se ukrala, sama otišla kod mladoženje bez znanja svojih roditelja.]. To this question, 18.3% said their marriage was through elopement (n = 324). Of those who eloped, 62.7% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of those who did not elope, 62.5% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. There was no significant association between affinal visitations and elopement, X 2 (2, N = 1104) = 0.003, p = .954. What is significant here is that there is no statistically significant difference. After a daughter elopes without permission from her parents, one would expect the angry parents of the daughter and the embarrassed parents of the son would want nothing to do with each other, and affinal visitations would not occur. After elopements in Turkey or Greece, families may shun each other for years because the elopement offends the patriarchal order and transgresses traditional norms (Bates 1974; Stirling 1965). Such, however, is not the case in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where frequent affinal visitations are as likely to occur after a marriage established with an elopement as without an elopement. To pursue this point, another question on the survey asked whether any of your siblings married by elopement. To this question, 37.6% answered yes. There was no statistically significant difference in the crosstab with affinal visitations; of those whose siblings eloped to marry, 64.3% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year, and of those whose siblings did not elope to marry, 61.3% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. A third question asked whether your mother married to elope. To this question, 22.9% answered yes, and again there was no statistically significant difference in the crosstab with affinal visitations. Of those whose mother eloped to marry, 60.1% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Of those whose mother did not elope to marry, 63.4% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Again, what is significant here is that there is no statistically significant difference. Affinal visitations are as likely to occur after a marriage is established through elopement as when a marriage is not established through an elopement.

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Faith Conviction Faith conviction was separated into two groups, strong faith and weak faith. The question relating to this variable was: “Which of the following statements best describes your beliefs?” Strong faith group consisted of responses fundamentalist beliefs, conservative beliefs, and moderate beliefs (n = 2004). Weak faith group consisted of responses non-believer, liberal beliefs, and do not know (n = 398). Participants who refused to respond or who answered “other” were excluded from the analysis. Of those who indicated strong faith, 64.9% reported having ten or more affinal visitations a year; of those who indicated weak faith, 53.1% reported having ten or more affinal visitations a year, X 2 (2, N = 1104) = 12.31, p < .001. Affinal visitations are positively associated with the religiosity of the respondents. Although affinal visitations occur in everyday life in a secular manner independent of religious institutions and authorities, there is still a positive association between strong faith and affinal visitations, suggesting each shares a role in the stability and functionality of the community Age Age was split into three groups by approximate thirds using cumulative frequency: (1) ages 18–36 younger, (2) ages 37–51 middle, (2) ages 52–88 older. One-third (33.3%) of respondents were categorized as younger, 32.2% as middle, and 34.5% as older, (Mage = 45, SD = 16.063). Of the respondents who were younger, 60.4% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of the respondents who were middle aged, 62.2% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; and of the respondents who were older, 63.6% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Patterns of affinal visitations are similar regardless of the age group. This indicates that the custom of affinal visitations is not changing through generations. While other marriage customs are changing in Bosnia-Herzegovina—for instance, after Yugoslav socialism religion is playing a greater role in each of the three faith traditions (Catholicism, Islam, and Serbian Orthodoxy)—it is important to note that this marriage custom is not changing through generations. It is important to stress this point. The custom exemplifies the resilience of the social community. Age was statistically insignificant, X 2 (2, N = 1104) = .954, p = .621. High School Education Education was split into two groups (1) high school education, (2) no high school education. High school education was statistically insignificant, indicating affinal kinship is independent of education. Affinity has a broad base



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 43

within the society’s population, cutting across social stratifications based on education. Of those with a high school education, 63.4% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year, and of those without a high school education, 62.4% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. High school education was statistically insignificant, indicating affinal kinship is independent of education, X 2 (2, N = 104) = .954, p = .787. Gender A cross-tabulation for affinal visitations by gender was conducted. Of the females in the sample, 64% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of the males, 61% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Gender was statistically insignificant, indicating that affinity is a responsibility shared by both the parents of the husband and the parents of the wife. This indicates the marriage custom has a reciprocal character within the society, sustaining an equalitatrian character within the marriage. Gender was statistically insignificant, indicating that affinity is a responsibility shared by both the parents of the husband and the parents of the wife, X 2 (2, N = 1104) = 1.828, p = .176. Income Income was separated into two groups: respondents making up to 999 konvertable mark per month and respondents making 1000 konvertable per month or more. The participants who reported that they did not know or refused to report their income were excluded (n = 689). Of those reporting lower income, 66.6% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of those reporting a higher income, 66.1% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. Affinal visitations are independent of economic class distinctions and typical social inequalities; the custom is shared across the strata of the population. Income was statistically insignificant, X 2 (2, N = 990) = .036, p = .861. Ethnicity Ethnicity in the survey consisted of three groups: 16.4% Croat, 49% Bosniak, and 34.6% Serb, which closely approximates the population parameter. No respondents in the current survey identified as “other.” Of the respondents who identified as Bosniaks, 57.6% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; of the respondents who identified as Croats, 58.9% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year; and of the respondents who identified as Serbs, 70.6% reported ten or more affinal visitations a year. A larger proportion of Bosnian Serbs is participating in the maintenance of affinity. The result is

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unexpected given the anthropological fieldwork of Lockwood and Bringa. Their ethnographies in Bosnia-Herzegovina focus primarily on Bosniaks, and there is little mention in their works of affinal visitations among Croats or Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bringa does, though, make the comparative observation that “The gift-exchange pattern between Catholic affines is similar to that described for Muslims” (1996, 163). Statistically significant variation by ethnicity was found, X 2 (2, N = 1104) = 28.89, p < .001. The above result is also unexpected because ethnographers who conducted fieldwork in the neighboring country of Serbia report that affinal kinship among Serbian Serbs is weak vis-à-vis other types of kinship, for instance, ritual kinship and agnatic kinship (Hammel 1968, 73–89; Simic 1971, 64). Andrei Simic reported in Serbia relations by marriage are “more fragile” and “can be regarded in the moral sense as being rather weak” (1971, 64). The custom, though, appears to be stronger among Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina vis-à-vis Serbs in Serbia, reflecting a national identity alongside an ethnic identity. Despite nationalistic ideologies and politics, according to the findings of this survey, Bosnian Serbs or the Bosnian Orthodox are as likely if not more likely to embrace this traditional Bosnian custom as Bosnian Muslims or Bosnian Catholics. There is another factor here. A higher proportion of Bosniaks were killed in the war more than twenty years ago. More significantly, a higher percentage of civilian casualties as opposed to soldier casualties were Bosniaks. The Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo reports the following percentages: some 65% of those killed were Bosniaks, followed by 25% Serbs and roughly 8% Croats. Some 83% of the civilian casualties were Bosniaks, 10% were Serbs, and roughly 5% were Croats, followed by a small number of Albanians and Romani (plural for Roma). See The Bosnian Book of the Dead published by the Research and Documentation Center and Humanitarian Law Society of Serbia available online. The book recommends that the total number of documented causalities reported (n = 97,207) be seen as an approximation of the minimal number and not a complete report. It is the proportions that make the important point. Despite the devastating loss of human lives during the war, Bosniaks sustain affinal relations at a high level. The people who suffered genocide in Srebrenica lost not only a high proportion of agnatic kin but also a high proportion of affinal kin. While sustaining the kinship is more difficult for Bosniaks and easier for Serbs, in both cases the kinship practice bears witness to the restorative character of the cultural custom within a social community after a devastating war. To cite again Duby’s telling point about affines during the early Middle Ages in Europe, this cultural heritage that has been preserved in BosniaHerzegovina is a reflection of its collective identity as a national community.



On Affinity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 45

Like all living organisms, human societies have a basic impulse which compels them to perpetuate their existence and to reproduce themselves within stable structures. The permanent character of such structures within human societies is instituted jointly by nature and by nurture. For what matters is the reproduction not only of individuals but also of the cultural system which unites them and orders their relations. (Duby 1994, 3)

The survey results we have just reported demonstrate the contemporary significance of Duby’s sociological point for his study of kinship in the early Middle Ages in Europe. Affinal kinship in Bosnia-Herzegovina perpetuates the existence of the society and reproduces the society with stable social structures despite the history of pogroms and genocide and despite the nationalistic policies and practices of the ethno-politicians who rule the country. Affinal kinship sustains not just individuals and married couples, but also the society and its cultural system. If, in fact, creating, structuring, and sustaining strong affinal kinships is a cultural heritage from the early Middle Ages, the inhabitants in Bosnia-Herzegovina have preserved this heritage longer than other Europeans (Herlihy 2004). In this sense, Bosnians are European in a way that Europeans are no longer. The immigration of wealthy Arabs from the Middle East to Bosnia jars native inhabitants who are also Muslim. Bosnian Muslims are taken aback by the closed, gated communities Muslim Arabs create for themselves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which sharply contrasts with the cultural order and social heritage of the native population. In the next chapter, we will continue and formulate the trans-ethnic character of the Bosnian identity through the concept of panethnicity, noting how panethnicity is exemplified in an array of marriage customs and analyzing the results of a second survey similar to the survey used in this chapter. NOTE 1.  The authors would like to thank Shaye Sakos for her assistance with the descriptive statistics in this chapter.

Chapter Three

Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina Coauthored with Harry Khamis

We want to consider whether the concept of panethnicity can answer the question of how one keeps a complicated, complex country like BosniaHerzegovina together.1 The question is important not only to Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also to other socially conflicted and war-torn regions in the world such as Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. In this chapter, we examine the degree to which a wide array of shared marriage customs and kinship patterns (prenuptial parties, elopements, affinal visitations, fictive kinships, and homogamy) exemplify panethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Marriage practices and kinship patterns are meaningful in the ways they draw upon culture, making marriage and kinship a vibrant setting to study identity and ethnicity. Panethnicity is a concept that before now has been primarily used to study ethnicity in the United States. Although distinguished otherwise by religion, language, nationality, or history, ethnic groups may share a panethnic identity. The ethnic identity option for Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Mexican Americans is their national origin; at the same time, they share the panethnic identity of Latino. The ethnic identity option for Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino Americans is their language and national heritage; at the same time, they share the panethnic identity of Asian Americans. This study extends the concept to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ethnic identity option for Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs is their ethno-religious identities or nacija; at the same time, they share a panethnic cultural heritage. While ethnic groups emphasize cultural distinctiveness and resist categorizations that compromise their particularity, panethnic identities are available and used in social and even political discourse (Lopez and Espiritu 1990; Okamoto 2003). For us, panethnicity is a heuristic frame that helps provide a meaningful account of the collective social identity of Bosnians. 47

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PANETHNICITY To theorize the concept, panethnicity mediates the tension between the two poles of assimilation and ethnic particularism. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the two possibilities are Yugoslavism (assimilation) and nationalism (ethnic particularism). William G. Lockwood (1975), author of European Muslims: Economy and Ethnicity in Western Bosnia, predicted in the seventies a movement toward assimilation. Given the influences of modernization, industrialization, and Yugoslav socialism, Lockwood predicted ethnic identifications like Croat, Serb, and Muslim would gradually be replaced by “a feeling of Yugoslavness” (1979, 223). At the political level, his prediction proved false; at the social level, there is evidence still today to support his prediction. Nostalgia for Yugoslavia and Tito remains strong among some people, even younger people living in cities who did not live during this period. Andrei Simic (1991) likewise conducted studies of ethnicity in Yugoslavia; he predicted in the eighties, in contrast to Lockwood, a movement toward nationalism, particularly in Serbia but spilling over to other Yugoslav republics. Simic said ethnic particularism would morph into a fervent nationalism, and the Yugoslav identity would be too weak to curtail this movement. Simic predicted that nationalism would erase the Yugoslav identity in everyday discourse and its significance in political practice (Silber and Little 1996; Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 1994; Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 2006). At the political level, Simic’s prediction proved true. At the social level, Simic’s prediction proved to be tragic. There is a third option, panethnicity. Panethnicity resists assimilation, on the one hand, and ethnic particularism, on the other hand, residing in the continuum. Panethnicity does not dilute itself into a broad category with universal import. Nor does panethnicity reify itself as a supra-ethnic identity. Panethnicity shares the same social ontology of other ethnic groups; that is, it is not a meta-ethnicity, encompassing the whole of humanity, which Karl Marx refers to as our “human species-being,” which falls outside the category of what an ethnic group is (Weber 1978). Panethnicity represents a liminal identity space. It helps at this point to cast the question of how one keeps a complicated society like Bosnia-Herzegovina together in terms of Émile Durkheim’s account of organic solidarity in modern times. “Not only, in a general way, does mechanical solidarity link men less strongly than organic solidarity, but also, as we advance in the scale of social evolution, it grows ever slacker” (Durkheim 1964, 214). Durkheim’s point is counterintuitive. In societies structured through industrialization by a division of labor, organic solidarity (whose social cohesion is “centrifugal”) is stronger than mechanical



Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 49

solidarity (whose social cohesion is “centripetal”). Individuals unlike each other due to specialization and individualization, nevertheless, have greater social solidarity; in turn, individuals like each other due to shared traditional customs and faiths have less social solidarity. The logic of organic solidarity goes against common sense. We will argue that panethnicity reconfigures Durkheim’s dichotomy, turning the concept of panethnicity from a descriptive one to an explanatory one. With panethnicity, social cohesion becomes, not a continuum, but a dialectic between organic solidarity and mechanical solidarity. Panethnicity resists assimilation, on the one hand, and ethnic particularism, on the other hand, residing in a liminal space. Given its connectedness to the mechanical solidarity of shared traditions, local customs, and common social and political practices, panethnicity does not dilute itself into a broad category with universal import. Nor does panethnicity reify itself as a supra-ethnic identity, which was the error of Yugoslavism according to some scholars (Djokić 2003). Panethnicity disavows political arguments that stipulate that when there is organic solidarity there must not be mechanical solidarity or when there is mechanical solidarity there must not be organic solidarity. The result of the dialectic is that organic solidarity and mechanical solidarity stand together without sacrificing the virtue of one for the other and without demonizing the vice of either. By extending the concept of panethnicity to the sense of social cohesion among inhabitants in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we develop the concept of panethnicity as an explanatory one for understanding the basis of social order in polyethnic society. The study examines how five of the marriage customs and kinship structures measured in the survey (prenuptial parties, elopements, fictive kinship, affinal visitations, and homogamy) exemplify either ethnic particularism or panethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Marriage customs and kinship patterns have not only an expressive but also an instrumental function in terms of both ethnic and national identities. The five outcomes are selected because of their distinctive relation to the concept of panethnicity. Some marriage customs are native to Bosnia-Herzegovina; some are shared with neighboring countries such as Serbia or Turkey. The chapter describes in detail the background of a marriage custom and then reports the variation by ethnic group, analyzing the structural association using a log-linear model to conduct inference tests. METHODOLOGY In fall 2014, an earlier survey about how people married and what type of kinship relations were maintained after marriage was included in an omnibus

50

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survey in Bosnia-Herzegovina conducted by Mareco Index Bosnia. In fact, three surveys have been conducted with Mareco Index Bosnia. The data from the first survey conducted in 2013 is analyzed in the book Through the Window: Kinship and Elopement in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The data from the survey conducted in 2014 is analyzed in this chapter. The data from the survey conducted in 2017 is analyzed in Chapter Two. For all three surveys, the technical report from Mareco Index on sampling design and interview protocols, data in an SPSS file, and the questions in English and Bosnian are available at Open ICPSR. The research design of this survey was like the previous survey described in Chapter Two and conducted in 2017. Following prescribed guidelines regarding ethical inquiry, transparency, and protection of human subjects, a clustered, stratified, random sample of 2,900 subjects was drawn from the country’s population, including the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. The survey contained categorical questions that were answered yes or no to generate binomial variables: Did you marry with a prenuptial party, arranged marriage, elopement, traditional wedding, civil ceremony, dowry, or religious ceremony? The questions are not mutually exclusive. For example, a bride could elope, have a traditional wedding at the groom’s home, go later to a civil ceremony, and, at a suitable time, have a religious ceremony. One question asked whether affinal visitations or inlaw gatherings occurred four or more times a year after marriage. The question measures kinship by marriage, the affinity called prijatelji (Lockwood 1975; Bringa 1995; Simic 1971). The question was repeated regarding the frequency of visits with the best man (kum) after the marriage and whether the visits occurred four or more times a year. The question measures the strength of fictive kinship, kinship through neither blood nor marriage but ritual kinship called kumstvo (Hammel 1968; Simic 1971; Filipović 1963). Independent variables included in the omnibus survey were age, religiosity, and income. To test the concept of panethnicity vis-à-vis ethnic particularism, we selected five culturally distinctive outcomes: engagement parties, elopement, affinal visitations, fictive kinship, and homogamy. The data from the survey was analyzed using a log-linear model (Agresti 2013; Khamis 2011), carried out by Harry Khamis. Specifically, a backward elimination model selection procedure was used with entry criterion P < 0.01 and with model goodness of fit criterion P > 0.1. This model along with the association graph is used to determine if there is a relationship between ethnicity and each of the outcome variables, after adjusting for the sociodemographic variables age, income, and religiosity. Each of the outcome variables is listed, and for each one the log-linear model analysis determines if the proportion of respondents who answered “yes” differs significantly among the three ethnicities.



Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 51

The three age groups used in these analyses are defined by the tertiles of age: (1) 18–43 (young respondents), (2) 44–55 (middle age respondents), and (3) over 55 (old respondents), taking the points that divide the sample into thirds. Religiosity is defined as more religious (attending religious service one or more times a month) and less religious (attending religious service less than once a month). Income is defined as poor (999 KM or less per month) and wealthy (more than 999 KM per month). In each case, the log-linear model analysis is based on a sample of 1867 (respondents married, widowed, or divorced). [Subtable sample sizes may not add to 1867 due to missing values for some variables.] The respondents who identified as Croat were 28.3% (n = 820), Bosniak 42.6% (n = 1,235), and Serb 29.1% (n = 845). This distribution mirrors the population census. None of the respondents identified as Other, for instance, Yugoslav, Roma, or Jew. As with the survey analyzed in the previous chapter, the technical report from Mareco Index on sampling design and interview protocols, data in an SPSS file, and the questions in English and Bosnian are available at Open ICPSR. For a summary of the results of the log-linear analysis, see Appendix C. Engagement Party We start the study with the engagement party (vjeridba) since marriages often are initiated with this rite of passage. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, an engagement party is not a bachelor’s party, nor a bridal shower. It instead is hosted by the groom and the bride’s families together. In Turkey, engagement parties are common if not the rule, where the custom is for marriages to be familyinitiated. Even if a marriage in Turkey is not formally arranged, it is generally family-initiated. Before the wedding ceremony, there is an engagement party as well as several additional rituals involving ring exchanges between the bride and groom with their families (Tekçe 2004). The hypothesis is that, given the shared faith of Islam with the inhabitants of Turkey, Bosniaks will have engagement parties at a higher rate than Croats or Serbs. The hypothesis is the custom exemplifies the ethnic particularity of Bosniaks and the social cohesion of mechanical solidarity. Table 3.1 below presents the proportion of Yes’s to the statement “We had an engagement party” for each ethnic group with cross tabulations for statistically significant variations by age and wealth. The hypothesis is not supported. It, in fact, is Bosnian Catholics who have prenuptial parties before a wedding more frequently, and Bosniaks and Serbs less frequently. The custom reflects the ethnic particularism of Croats rather than Bosniaks. For example, in the Catholic faith, the engagement party is called prstenovanje. After a marriage proposal, prošnja, the couple with their partners go to the church and ask for prstenovanje. The man gives a ring

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Table 3.1.   Engagement party (vjeridba) by ethnicity Croat

Bosniak

Serb

N

All Respondents Young Respondents Middle age Respondents

69.7% 81.8% 71.9%

47.9% 64.6% 43.6%

44.6% 50.8% 48.1%

1,867 643 609

Poor older respondents Wealthy older respondents

53.3% 52.9%

32% 29.7%

34.4% 40.7%

459 98

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR

to his fiancée in front of their parents and the priest so as to announce their intention to marry. After the news of the engagement is shared with the community, the marriage ceremony is held in the church. The log-linear model analysis reveals that the relationship between engagement party and ethnicity is different for the three age groups. The proportion of Yes’s who had an engagement party is higher for Croats than Bosniaks and the proportion of Yes’s higher for Bosniaks than Serbs among young respondents (P < 0.0001). Engagement parties are occurring more frequently among young respondents, especially young Bosniaks in contrast to older Bosniaks as Table 3.1 indicates, reflecting changes over time in the marriage custom. “The location and meaning of particular ethnic boundaries are continuously negotiated, revised, and revitalized” (Nagel 1994, 153). Middle age Croats had engagement parties significantly more frequently than middle age Bosniaks and middle age Serbs (P < 0.0001) proportionately. There is not a significant difference between middle age Bosniaks and middle age Serbs. For older respondents, the relationship between engagement party and ethnicity is different for the two income groups, reflecting a difference in terms of economic class. The proportion of Yes’s among poor elderly Croats who had engagement parties is significantly higher than among poor elderly Bosniaks and poor elderly Serbs (P = .001); there is no significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between poor elderly Bosniaks and poor elderly Serbs. Table 3.1 shows the results for wealthy old respondents. While suggestive of a significant association, the proportion of Yes’s among wealthy, elderly respondents, nevertheless, does not differ significantly for the three ethnicities (P = 0.139). Religion influences marriage customs, and different faiths influence corresponding ethnic groups or nacija in different ways. When a marriage custom is panethnic in character, the influence of religion is weaker. When a marriage custom reflects ethnic particularism, the influence of religion is stronger. Religiosity is increasing in Bosnia-Herzegovina within each nacija



Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 53

after the recent war, and so religion, whether Catholicism, Islam, or Serbian Orthodoxy, influences marriage rituals today more than during Yugoslav socialism. The social cohesion of ethnic groups becomes more mechanical (centripetal) and less organic (centrifugal). Elopement Elopements (ukrala se, meaning the young woman stole herself from her natal home into marriage) have been discussed in the previous chapter. In the eighties, Bringa (1995, 76) noted that “The most common form of marriage during my stay in the village and I believe over the last thirty years was marriage by elopement.” The anthropologists Lockwood (1975) and Bringa (1995, 132–33) suggest that elopement is a marriage custom particular to Muslims, and Croats and Serbs more commonly marry with traditional weddings. Given the findings from these ethnographies, the hypothesis is Bosniaks elope at a higher rate than do Croats and Serbs, reflecting ethnic particularism. Table 3.2 below presents the proportion of Yes’s to the statement “We eloped” for each ethnicity with cross tabulations for statistically significant variations. The hypothesis is supported (p < .0001). The log-linear model analysis reveals that the relationship between elopement and ethnicity is different for the three age groups. The data in Table 3.2 show this breakdown. The proportion of Yes’s for young Croats who eloped is significantly lower than for young Bosniaks (P = 0.009); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between young Croats and young Serbs nor between young Bosniaks and young Serbs. It is easier for Bosniaks to attain divorce if a marriage does not work out (Bringa 1995; Lockwood 1975). It is harder for Croats who are Catholic. Table 3.2 indicates the changes in this custom over time. The proportion of Yes’s who eloped to marry is significantly higher for middle age Bosniaks than for middle age Croats, and it is significantly higher for middle age Croats than for middle age Serbs (P < 0.0001). For Croats, the influence of the Catholic Church was less during Yugoslav socialism. Table 3.2 shows how this pattern changes among elder inhabitants. The proportion of Table 3.2.   Elopements (ukrala se) by ethnicity

All Respondents Young Respondents Middle age Respondents Older Respondents

Croat

Bosniak

Serb

Row Total

N

14.3% 5.5% 16.3% 21.6%

25% 14% 27.2% 35.7%

11.3% 8.3% 6.6% 17.5%

17.7% 10.1% 17.9% 25.5%

1,867 643 609 615

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR

Chapter Three

54

Yes’s who eloped to marry for older Bosniaks is significantly higher than for older Croats and older Serbs (P < 0.0001); there is no significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between older Croats and older Serbs. Elopement was relatively common fifty or more years ago, particularly in rural areas. The notably higher proportion of elder inhabitants in each ethnic group who eloped indicates the custom is a traditional and a panethnic one in BosniaHerzegovina. Elopements strengthened the solidarity of the polyethnic community (Doubt 2012; 2014). Affinal Visitations As noted in Chapter Two, Bringa (1995) describes the social importance of affinal relations (prijatelji) among Bosniaks. Marriage strengthens not the agnatic group vis-à-vis another agnatic group, but the affinal group, creating the opportunity if not the imperative to establish bonds between non-agnates for their own sake (Lockwood 1975; Donia and Lockwood 1978). Two questions were asked: First, do affinal visitations occur four or more times a year and, second, do affinal visitations occur twelve or more times a year? The hypothesis is that this kinship structure is particular to Bosniaks and not shared with other ethnic groups. Table 3.3 reports the variation of Yes’s to parents visiting four or more times a year by ethnicity. There is no significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s among the three ethnicities (P = 0.383). The survey results do not support the hypothesis. The custom reflects a panethnic practice rather than a particular ethnic identity. The inference test shows that there is no significant variation by ethnicity. Affinal kinship reflects a strong panethnic identity in BosniaHerzegovina. This kinship structure, which does not appear to be as strong in Croatia and Serbia, is shared in parallel ways by the three major ethnic groups. The marriage custom is not changing through the generations. Age and income are insignificant variables. While the social cohesion of affines is initially organic (centrifugal), through frequent visitations it also becomes mechanical (centripetal). Table 3.3.   Affinal visitations (prijatelji) by ethnicity

Parents visiting four or more times a year

Yes

Croat

Bosniak

Serb

Row Total

73.1%

71.2%

74.5%

72.7%

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR



Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 55

Fictive Kinship Marriage can serve two kinship functions in a society, which anthropologists refer to as the “vertical” function and “horizontal” function. The “vertical” function preserves continuity by sustaining a family’s blood line, the descent line, typically patriarchal (Nagel 1994; Simic 1971; 1999; 2000). There is the desire to preserve the memory of the family’s name and honor through succeeding generations of offspring. One example that serves the “vertical” function is when the daughter marries the son of her father’s brother. Among folk Bosniaks, these marriages are traditionally scorned even though allowed in Islam. Only the wealthy among the Bosniaks (begs) married first cousins, in part to protect their inheritances (Filipović 1982b). Marriages that serve the “horizontal” function tie society together across a single generation. Relations outside one’s bloodline are established through marriage or fictive kinship, creating a wider solidarity within the society, making society less clannish. In the Balkans, there is also the kinship called kumstvo, which is an important fictive kinship. Kum and kuma name a variety of fictive kinships: They refer to a best man at a wedding, a male or female witness at a wedding, a godparent at a baptism or witness at a circumcision, a witness at a child’s confirmation or first communion, a sponsor during a child’s first hair cutting, or a woman who nursed a child not her own. Eugene Hammel’s (1968) study of Serbian kinship in the former Yugoslavia points out that “horizontalness” is achieved through fictive kinship or kumstvo within the traditional Serbian Orthodox community. He observes that one function of fictive kinship within the Orthodox community is to cut off the development of and dependence upon affinal kin. Among Serbs kumstvo carries more respect and social capital than prijatelji, although in the Serbian Orthodox community the term prijatelji is also used to name inlawship. Kumstvo serves the function of horizontalness and, at the same time, preserves the hegemony of agnatic kin and agnatic solidarity. Filipović (1963, 77) found that this fictive kinship is “considered as being much stronger than kinship by blood” in traditional rural communities. This pattern has, of course, changed with modernization, as Hammel points out. One survey question was if visits with the best man or kum occur four or more times a year after the marriage. Given the importance of kumovi among Serbs, the hypothesis is Serbs will visit the best man at a higher rate, reflecting ethnic particularism (Hammel 1968; Simic 1991). Table 3.4 reports the relative frequency of Yes’s by ethnicity with cross tabulations with statistically significant variations. The hypothesis is generally supported. The relationship between “visiting best man four or more times a year” differs by the three ethnicities. The proportion of Yes’s who visit the best man four or more times a year does not

Chapter Three

56

Table 3.4.   Visiting best man four or more times a year by ethnicity

All Respondents Young Respondents Middle age respondents Older respondents

Croat

Bosniak

Serb

Row Total

N

74.3% 78.2% 78.7% 65.9%

63.5% 74% 58.4% 56.3%

81.1% 81.3% 85.1% 77.7%

72% 77.3% 72.2% 66.3%

1,668 643 609 615

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR

differ significantly among young respondents in the three ethnicities (P = 0.165). This finding is in line with Filipović’s (1963, 77) ethnography which asserts that “Ritual kinship of various forms was of great importance among South Slavs in the past, because it widened the circle of relatives beyond the family, the clan, and the tribe.” South Slavs is inclusive, encompassing Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Macedonians. Here, somewhat unexpectedly, panethnicity is exemplified in how young respondents collectively sustain this marriage custom. Table 3.4 reports the variation for middle age respondents. The proportion of Yes’s for Bosniaks who are middle aged who visit the best man four or more times a year is significantly lower than for Croats or Serbs (P < 0.0001); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between Croats and Serbs. Among Bosniaks kum may be simply the person who served as the witness to a marriage, making the relationship more formal and less long-term. The proportion of Yes’s for elder Serbs who visit the best man four or more times a year is significantly higher than for elder Croats and Bosniaks (P < 0.0001); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between elder Croats and Bosniaks. The results here are that a strong relation to the best man or kum exists among not only Serbs but also Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Moreover, the importance of kumstvo is increasing among young Bosniak respondents where kum may mean the best friend who served as witness at a marriage. This finding supports Nagel’s observation that “One strategy used by polyethnic groups to overcome such differences and build a more unified pan ethnic community is to blend together cultural material from many component group traditions” (1994, 164). HOMOGAMY Previous studies of intermarriage among ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia use census data collected in 1990 or earlier in former Yugoslavia (Botev



Panethnicity and Social Solidarity in Bosnia-Herzegovina 57

1994; Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 1994; Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 2006; Smits 2009). This study uses data collected in 2014 in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Marrying someone in the same faith reflects ethnic particularism, and it may be called either endogamy or homogamy (Smits 2009). It may be misleading to say marrying outside of one’s ethnic group in former Yugoslavia is exogamy. Yugoslavs were marrying Yugoslavs. From the viewpoint of the Yugoslavs marrying, their marriages were endogamous. This study thus uses the term homogamy for marrying someone in the same faith. Previous studies examine whether intermarriages in former Yugoslavia correlate with social cohesion in the context of the violence in former Yugoslavia in the nineties (Botev 1994; Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 1994; Smits 2009). While heterogamous marriages seemed to be increasing during Yugoslav socialism (which was seen as a movement toward assimilation), Lockwood (1975), Bringa (1995: 142–154), and Botev (1994) report that they were still mostly homogamous with respect to ethnoreligious identity, particularly in rural areas. Homogamy reflects boundary maintenance, where the function of boundary maintenance is to provide stability in a polyethnic society (Bringa 1995, 149–155). Maintaining differences is as functional to stability as maintaining similarities; in turn, maintaining similarities is as dysfunctional to stability as maintaining differences. Differences thrive vis-à-vis similarities just as similarities do vis-à-vis differences. Polyethnic societies thrive on this truism. Social stability resides in the social structure where there are criteria for mutual identification as well as “a structuring of interaction which allows the persistence of cultural differences” (Barth 1966, 16). This dialectic explains an implicit function of homogamy in a polyethnic society, where panethnicity and ethnic particularity stand tall side by side. Each is able to stand tall vis-àvis the other because of the society’s panethnic identity. The critical focus is not the cultural “stuff” that goes into and resides within the ethnic group per se, but the boundaries that define the group (Barth 1969; 1966). In socialist Yugoslavia, the public recognition of Yugoslavism by inhabitants was positive. Exogamy thus reflected the presence of another, increasingly significant boundary, namely, Yugoslavism. Barth (1969, 16) writes, “The identification of another person as a fellow member of an ethnic group implies a strong criteria for evaluation and judgment. It thus entails the assumption that the two are fundamentally ‘playing the same game.’” Yugoslavism was becoming another game to play vis-à-vis ethnic particularism. “Identifying as a Yugoslav thus avoided either assimilating into the majority or labeling oneself as a minority” (Sekulić, Massey, and Hodson 1994, 86). The hypothesis is that homogamy is a custom equally shared by the ethnic groups or, to put it in the opposite way, exogamy, reflecting the emerging of

Chapter Three

58 Table 3.5.   Homogamy by ethnicity

All Respondents Young respondents who are more religious Young respondents who are less religious Middle age respondents Older respondents who are more religious Older respondents who are less religious

Croat

Bosniak

Serb

Row Total

N

89.9% 98.4%

88.2% 94.7%

94.5% 96.8%

90.7% 96.7%

1,867 302

71.8%

94.0%

94.6%

91.7%

337

89.9% 96.9%

82.8% 89.2%

97.2% 93%

89.2% 93%

609 257

69.4%

84.8%

91.3%

85.8%

353

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR

a Yugoslav national identity, is equally practiced by ethnic groups in BosniaHerzegovina. Table 3.5 shows the frequency of Yes’s to marrying someone in the same faith by ethnicity with cross tabulations for statistically significant associations. The results support the hypothesis for certain subgroups; Serbs are more likely to be endogamous. The relationship between homogamy and ethnicity differs among the three age groups. For young respondents, the relationship between endogamy and nationality differs between those who are less religious and those who are more religious (as measured by the number of times the respondent attends religious service). The proportion of Yes’s among young respondents who are more religious does not differ significantly among the three nationalities (P = 0.286). Religion strengthens ethnic particularism; young respondents who are more religious are less likely to marry someone in another faith. The proportion of Yes’s among young respondents who are less religious is significantly lower for Croats than it is for young Bosniaks or Serbs (P < 0.0001); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between young Bosniaks and Serbs who are less religious. Ethnic particularism is not necessarily associated with religion for young Bosniaks and young Serbs who are less religious. The proportion of Yes’s for middle age respondents is significantly higher for Serbs than for middle age Croats or Bosniaks (P < 0.0001); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between middle age Croats and Bosniaks. Middle age Serbs were less influenced by Yugoslavism than middle age Croats and Bosniaks. For older respondents, the relationship between endogamy and ethnicity differs between those who are less religious and those who are more religious. The proportion of Yes’s does not differ significantly among the three ethnici-



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ties who are older and more religious (P = 0.101). The proportion of Yes’s is significantly higher for older Serbs who are less religious than for Croats who are less religious (P = 0.001); there is not a significant difference in the proportion of Yes’s between the older Bosniaks and Croats who are less religious nor between the elder Bosniaks and Serbs who are less religious. Ethnic particularity of older Serbs who are less religious is stronger than ethnic particularity of older Croats and older Bosniaks who are less religious. Nikolai Botev employs census data from Yugoslavia’s Federal Statistical Office 1962–1989 and, like this study, uses a log-linear model; Botev (1994, 475) finds that “The difference between the endogamy parameters for the Moslems and the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina is not statistically significant at p < .05; the Croats are significantly more endogamous than the other two groups.” For this omnibus survey conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2014, when broken down by age, economic level, and religiosity, the results show that Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina tend to be less endogamous than Serbs among (i) middle age respondents and (ii) elderly respondents who are less religious; and they tend to be less endogamous than both Serbs and Bosniaks among young respondents who are less religious. The level of endogamy does not differ significantly among the three ethnic groups for young as well as elderly respondents who are more religious. There was no instance in our study where Croats are more endogamous than other groups. “The purpose of statistics is to organize a useful argument from quantitative evidence, using a form of principled rhetoric. The word principled is crucial. Just because rhetoric is unavoidable, indeed acceptable, in statistical presentations, [it] does not mean that you should say anything you please” (Abelson 1995, xiii). SUMMARY This study examined the degree to which marriage customs and kinship exemplify panethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A non-nationalistic way of understanding a national personality is to recognize how a national personality is based in a panethnic rather than a monoethnic heritage. Nationalism reduces not only another but also one’s self to one-dimensionality through the inflation of a singular dimensionality. Other meaningful identities cease to signify anything after being encased by an X ethos. Nationalist politicians in former Yugoslavia established independent states based on a nation-state model favoring the hegemony of one ethnic group and glorifying that ethnic group’s mechanical solidarity. Bosnia-Herzegovina, based on a different and superior model of social order, then needed to be attacked and destroyed. We find that the concept of panethnicity supports the sociological findings

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of Hodson, Sekulić, and Massey (1994, 1555): “Bosnia enjoyed the highest level of tolerance of any Yugoslav republic, but this increased tolerance proved insufficient to outweigh the political forces emanating from its extremely diverse social fabric.” The political forces that undermined BosniaHerzegovina emanated from outside rather than from inside Bosnia-Herzegovina, that is, from Croatia and Serbia (Campbell 1998; Mahmutčehajić 2000a; Silber and Little 1996). The Dayton Peace Accords established a constitution and federal structure that reifies ethnic particularism at the political level and denies the panethnic realities of the country and its civil society. The longer the Dayton Peace Accords and the current political institutions continue to structure BosniaHerzegovina along nationalistic lines, the panethnic heritage and social norms that sustain the polyethnic society as a polyethnic society will wane (Listhaug and Ramet 2013; Chandler 2000). There is a panethnic identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina that carries historical and social significance, more so than the panethnic identities studied in the United States. This panethnic identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, goes unrecognized in political and academic discussions. Panethnicity protectively disavows political arguments that stipulate that when there is organic solidarity there must not be mechanical solidarity (which historically was the political problem of Yugoslavism). Panethnicity prudently shuns political arguments that when there is mechanical solidarity there must not be organic solidarity (which is the agenda of today’s nationalist politicians). Panethnicity instead holds organic solidarity and mechanical solidarity together without sacrificing the virtue of one for the other and without demonizing the vice of either (Lovrenović 1996; Komšić 2016; Mahmutćehajić, 2000b). This study frames the concept of panethnicity as an explanatory concept by developing its positive relation to social cohesion. Rather than ask how can one keep a complicated, complex society like Bosnia-Herzegovina together, this study asks how can one not keep (even after a genocidal war) a complicated, complex identity like Bosnia-Herzegovina together. The inability of international politicians and nationalist leaders of their nacija to acknowledge the shared cultural and social heritage of inhabitants prevents this question from being taken up. The hope of this study is that its comprehensive statistical analysis demonstrates empirically the shared cultural heritage and history of this tragically maligned country and its importance to social stability. For us, the dichotomy of mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity is a false dichotomy. It is not only possible but also desirable for a community to contain both types of solidarity simultaneously and interdependently. The problem of liberal democracies and their promotion of a free market in a global economy is that they idealize the individuality inherent in organic



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solidarity. The good of mechanical solidarity in traditional societies is unrecognized and denigrated as regressive and undeveloped. While organic solidarity, as Durkheim said, represents the advance of civilization, it is not necessarily an enlightened solidarity with respect to the self-understanding of humanity itself. Indeed, in this regard, it may be a retreat. In contrast, the problem of nationalism is that it idealizes the unity of mechanical solidarity. The good of individuality and respect for human rights are sacrificed as unnecessary values. Nationalism fails to recognize the unity found in diversity and multiplicity. It wrong-headedly assumes that unity can be expressed only as singularity. A recommendation for future research is to replicate the study’s questions on marriage and kinship along with its representative sampling in countries that were part of former Yugoslavia and surround Bosnia-Herzegovina, namely, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. The goal would be to measure the variation and non-variation among national identities and ethnic identities. For example, there are a half million Muslims in Serbia living in an area called Sandžak around the city of Novi Pazar. Are the marriage customs and kinship structures of Muslims in Serbia comparable to the marriage customs and kinship structures of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Orthodox in Serbia? The replication of the survey study could also occur throughout East Europe. In Bulgaria, for instance, prijatelji (affinal kinship) and kumovi (ritual kinship) are important kin relations, and the same words are used to identify the relations. How do these relations structure Bulgarian society and its different ethnic groups? A multinational study would address the interrelation of ethnic and national identities as they are reflected in the country’s marriage customs and kinship patterns, which are not just symbolic but functional. Finally, it would also be informative to study the marriage customs and kinship structures of Slavic and Baltic post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe together. How are marriage customs and kinship structures in Slavic and Baltic countries both similar and different vis-à-vis Western Europe? Such a multinational study would provide a basis for understanding the complexity of social and cultural identities in Eastern Europe; its framework would be objective and transcend nationalist politics. In the next chapter, we will focus on how prijatelji (affinal kinship) and kumovi (ritual kinship) establish social solidarity in similar and different ways. The chapter is complex for several reasons. One is some parts of the chapter are descriptive, defining terms, while other parts are explanatory. Another is we compare kinship structures in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. We address both ethnic differences and national differences as exemplified in shared kinship patterns that function in different ways.

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NOTE 1.  This chapter was previously published as “Panethnicity and Social Solidarity” in East European Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 1–2, 2017. Republished with permission.

Chapter Four

National Identities in Kinship: The Case of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina

KUMOVI Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina share kinship structures. As discussed in the last chapter, one is kumovi, which is a ritual or fictive kinship. It is fictive only in the sense that it is a kinship neither by blood nor by marriage. It nevertheless is real. Kumovi may refer to a best man at a wedding, a male or female witness at a wedding, a godparent at a baptism, a witness at a circumcision, a witness at a child’s confirmation, a witness at a first communion, a sponsor during a child’s first hair cutting, or a woman who nursed a child who was not her own. Kumovi (and this is important) are drawn not from agnatic or affinal kin, but from outside kin by blood or marriage, giving the kinship system a horizontal structure within the community. This pattern contrasts with findings about the similar ritual kinship in Central America where a godparent may be drawn from agnatic or affinal kin (Foster 1969). Among Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the term kum may have three meanings. It refers to the witness at a wedding. At an Islamic religious wedding, if there is one kum, male witness, there needs to be two kume, female witnesses. In the wedding ceremony, two women are equivalent to one man. Kum also refers to the witness at a circumcision. Finally, kum refers to someone outside the family who has a central role at a child’s first ritualized hair cutting. Safet HadžiMuhamedović (2018, Chapter 3) provides a historical example of the ritual from the writing of Kosta Hörman originally published in 1889: “The kum takes the child on his lap, and one of the child’s relatives brings in some bowl, usually glass or ceramic, with clean water and holds it under the child’s neck. The kum takes the scissors and cuts some of the child’s hair, firstly above the right ear, then from the top of the head, and, 63

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finally, above the left ear. The cut hair falls into the water in the dish. When he has completed this, kum throws some coins into the water.” Among Catholics, the term kum is used to refer to the best man or male witness at a wedding and kuma for a bridesmaid or female witness at a wedding. Catholics also use kum to refer to the witness at a baptism or the witness at a child’s confirmation ceremony in a church. Among the Orthodox, the best man at a wedding may later be the witness at the baptism of the couple’s first child. Vera Stein Erlich (1978) reported that for the Serbian Orthodox kum at a wedding ceremony is the one who declares, Ja ih vjenčavam, meaning not so much “I marry them” but “I would let them be married” or “I make them to be married,” taking on a role that is parallel to the priest. HadžiMuhamedović (2018, Chapter 3) notes the difference between “wet kumstvo” and “dry kumstvo.” Wet kumstvo occurs during a child’s baptism. Dry kumstvo occurs at weddings or the ceremony at a child’s first haircutting. Among the Serbian Orthodox, if one’s father had been kum to another family, the son inherits the honor and the duties the father had. Historically, kumstvo, the collective noun for kumovi, signifying as well wholeness of interpersonal and interfamily relations, is given in exchange. One exchange is to offer kumstvo in exchange for exoneration from a crime or a thief. Another is as payment for an important favor. Kumstvo is also offered to be granted pardon, pardon for a crime such as manslaughter or homicide. Kumstvo is also offered as a peacebuilding relation during a blood feud so as to reach a settlement between two families. Kumstvo establishes a social contract between parties or two agnatic lines that were in conflict with each other. Erlich (1978) shares this folklore, “In Vrčević’s story: Lijek za kosovske rane (“Cure for Kosovo Wounds”), some outlaws kidnapped wives and children of three beys [Turkish title for Ottoman chieftain] and sought ransom for those prisoners. One bey sent them some less treasure than they were looking for, but offered them the haircutting godfatherhood. The outlaws accepted the treasure, cut off children’s locks of hair, and became godfathers to bey’s children—which meant protection for the outlaws and for their further extortion.” This means the outlaws will be protected by the Ottoman authority and will be able to continue to extort with impunity. HadžiMuhamedović (2018, Chapter 3) notes that when kumstvo is forged for protection from trouble, it is described as po nevolji. We now focus on the normative kinship system that makes kumovi as ritual kinship and then prijatelji as affinal kinship culturally significant and socially compelling in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The cultural order of these kinships frames not only ethnic differences, but also national differences. Examining different kinship customs and their variations in human behavior makes it possible to differentiate both ethnic and national differences. This



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comparative study avoids the charm of civilizational-ethnographic romanticism and its pseudo-scientific mythology about a people’s history (Tishkov 2005, 163–66); it also, by focusing on empirical social conduct and cultural phenomena, avoids the traps of methodological nationalism and its ideological essentialism (Wimmer and Schiller 2002). Kumstvo has significant cultural prestige, social organization, and ethical expectations among the Orthodox Serbs (Hammel 1968). One folk saying that captures this moral sentiment is kum nije dugme [the kum is not a button]. The kum cannot be used and lightly tossed away. The kum is more than a figurehead. Another folk saying that points to the kum’s prestige is: Bog na nebu, kum na zemlji [God in Heaven, the kum on earth]. The kum has a god-like status on earth, seen as a savior-figure in time of trouble. Another folk saying is Kad kum dolazi u kuću i zemlja ispod praga se trese [When the kum comes into the house, even the ground under the threshold trembles] (Hammel 1968, 79). Another frequently heard folk saying is kum prije brata, meaning one’s kum before one’s brother in terms of love, honor, and respect. An informant in Serbia reported that a traditional custom in her town was to tip one’s hat when walking past your kum’s house, even when the kum was not there. It is considered bad luck if two men are each other’s kumovi or if two women are each other’s kume. When a man not from the Balkans shared with a Balkan friend he was the best man at his friend’s wedding and his friend the best man at his wedding, the Balkan man instinctively asked whether the best man had had any children. The assumption behind the question was if two men are each other’s kumovi it brings misfortune. The practice was thus taboo. Symmetry is an unhealthy principle for kumovi. Hammel’s major finding is that kumstvo traditionally has a unilateral structure among the Orthodox Serbs. In terms of societal expectations, kum is be present at important family events, kum gives the biggest present, and kum is there for emotional and financial support. Someone who is respected is asked to be kum. When one is asked to be kum or kuma, the request cannot really be refused any more than a groom’s request of a close friend to be the best man at his wedding can be refused. Rejecting the request would be rude and end the relationship. Moreover, one does not offer oneself as kum—the offer could be presumptuous, just as it is out of place to ask to be the best man at a friend’s wedding. The unilateral structure of kumstvo becomes the cultural order that structures the ritual kinship as a moral relation. It is asymmetry rather than symmetry that makes kumstvo stable. Hammel argues, “In a general way, the information supports Levi-Strauss’ hypothesis . . . that systems of direct exchange show less solidarity than those of unilateral prestation” (1968, 77).

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Prestation means giving something, a gift to another in a formal and obligatory way. For example, guests give gifts to a couple marrying, but the couple marrying does not then reciprocate and give gifts to the guests. The exchange is unilateral, normatively speaking, although in modern weddings, the couple sometimes leaves small tokens of appreciation for guests as gifts at the wedding tables, which is only the exception that proves the rule. Hammel argues that if the structure of kumstvo is symmetrical and bilateral, there is less solidarity, for example, “the Montenegrin system, which is characterized by a high frequency of direct reciprocity, is fragile, and where the social fabric is mended it is mended through a unilateral grant of kumstvo” (Hammel 1968, 77). The structural principle is that the more asymmetrical kumstvo is, the more solidarity there is. In turn, the more symmetrical kumstvo is, the less solidarity there is. The argument is more analytical than it is empirical in that its purpose is to understand the sentiment of morality inherent in kumstvo. The argument, however, is counterintuitive to the modern mind. Hammel continues, “The fact that reciprocal kumstvo relationships in Montenegro tend to be more stable than nonreciprocal ones does not detract from the argument, for one must distinguish between the solidarity of a linked pair in an otherwise unstable system and the solidarity of the system at large” (Hammel 1968, 77). Hammel’s analytical argument overrides his empirical observation at this point, following perhaps Talcott Parson’s influence that stresses theorizing over empirical observation. KUMOVI VIS-À-VIS PRIJATELJI As already discussed, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina share a second kinship structure, namely prijatelji discussed in an earlier chapter. The reciprocal visitations between the husband and wife’s families are repeated and obligatory. To cite Bringa again, food is shared for a common meal where “sharing food is an act of inclusion and symbolizes social intimacy” (1995, 140). More strongly, “sharing food in someone’s household is a symbolic act of kinship” (Bringa 1995, 140). In her ethnography, Tone Bringa makes a challenging comment. While formulating what is special about affinal kinship among Bosniaks in comparison to other ethnic communities, Bringa (1995, 147) writes, “(Among the Bosnian Muslims, however, it is ultimately ‘morality’, and not ‘blood’ which binds people together in a collectivity.)” The observation (put in parentheses in the text) is stark and provocative. For one thing, it creates a dichotomy that depicts blood as amoral. Balkan nationalists, of course, would differ, and nationalism is perhaps what Bringa (written during the genocidal war in Bosnia-



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Herzegovina) is thinking of when she makes this statement that morality and not blood binds people together in a collectivity. The message is that affinal rather than agnatic kinships are moral relations. Bringa’s statement also blocks the possibility of applying this point about prijatelji to kumovi. Among Orthodox Serbs, morality is found not in blood, but in kumovi. Among Bosniaks, morality is found not in kumovi but in prijatelji. The latter point, however, is true for the inhabitants in Bosnia in general. Note that the logic that sustains the normative structure of kumstvo in Serbia is the inversion of the one that structures affinal relations in BosniaHerzegovina. These contrasting cultural orders reflect national differences. The more symmetrical prijateljstvo is, the more solidarity there is; the more asymmetrical prijateljstvo is, the less solidarity there is. A Bosnian woman now living in the United States said that when her daughter married a man from the United States, she and her husband invited their son-in-law’s parents to their home for a weekend visit. The visitation was sadly not reciprocated. The family in the United States did not have a sense of the cultural custom. Hammel’s ethnography documents kumstvo’s hegemony among Orthodox Serbs. In Serbian Orthodox communities, “kumstvo is longer lasting than affinal ties” (Hammel 1968, 91). Others draw the same conclusions. In a study of traditional Serbian Orthodox weddings in Macedonia, David B. Rheubottom found that one function of the wedding (svadba) is the negation of affinity. Once the daughter leaves her natal home with the bridal party to go to the marriage ceremony at the Orthodox church, the ties to her natal family are cut. “Household boundedness and agnatic solidarity are closely linked to the denial of affinity” (Rheubottom 1980, 247). In A Serbian Village, Joel Halpern reported that after the church ceremony the wedding party goes to the groom’s home where there is a feast with merry ceremonies. The bride’s family, however, does not attend the marriage ceremony or the feast at the beginning but comes to the feast several hours later or perhaps the next day. While the bride’s family is warmly welcomed, the family sits at separate tables from the banquet (Halpern 1968, 197). As already mentioned, Simic reported that in Serbia relations by marriage are “more fragile” and “can be regarded in the moral sense as being rather weak” (1971, 64). By way of contrast, relations by marriage in BosniaHerzegovina are more stable and can be regarded in the moral sense as being rather strong. There is a different normative orientation. In Places of Pain: Forced Displacement, Popular Memory, and TransLocal Identities in Bosnian War-Torn Communities, Hariz Halilovich makes this observation: “The fictive kinship called kumstvo or kumovi (plural of kum) is maintained as a life-long friendship which often lasts even if the

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actual marriage between spouses ends in a divorce. Loyalty to kumstvo (kinship) is seen as a very honorable deed” (2013, 77–78). Kumstvo continues even when a marriage ends in divorce. Remember what was said in a previous chapter, prijatelji do not remain prijatelji if a marriage ends in divorce. The reason for the kinship no longer exists. This, however, is not the case with kumovi. The responsibility inherent in the kinship continues for the sake of its honor. In the village he studied in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lockwood found kumstvo has “relative unimportance as an alliance-forming institution” (Lockwood 1975, 81). “Prijateljstvo stands in their stead, and duplication and reduplication of bonds are means of reinforcing them” (Lockwood 1975, 81). Talking about prijatelji among Bosnian Muslims, Lockwood (1974, 258) observed, “There is an important and illuminating parallel here with fictive kinship among the Serbs.” What is this parallel? “Like the taking of affines among Moslems, Serbs prefer to take godparents [kumovi] from afar.” Lockwood continued (1974, 258), “Each institution is considered too important a relationship to endanger by careless day-to-day interaction.” Kumovi and prijatelji are similar kinship institutions in that there is the need to keep the kinship, given its prestige and moral weight, at a respectful distance. The distance protects both institutions and helps maintain their moral prestige in everyday social interactions and the community. Lockwood then makes another perhaps still more important comparison albeit in a footnote: “While Moslems inherit affinal relationships but not those formed on basis of fictive kinship, just the opposite is true among Serbs. This, too, is an important indication of the function and relative importance of these institutions in the two societies” (Lockwood 1974, 268). Affinal kinship may be passed down through generations among Bosnian Muslims, but not fictive kinship; fictive kinship may be passed down through generations among Orthodox Serbs, but not affinal kinship. Hammel was Lockwood’s doctoral supervisor at the University of California, Berkeley, where Lockwood received his doctoral degree in 1970. During a visit in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of us asked Lockwood whether he ever discussed with Hammel his findings about prijatelji in Bosnia-Herzegovina visà-vis Hammel’s finding about kumovi in Serbia, and Lockwood answered no. INTERETHNIC KUMOVI IN BOSNIAHERZEGOVINA AND THE IMPACT OF THE WAR The subject becomes even more complex. In his recent ethnography, HadžiMuhamedović (2018, Chapter 3) criticizes Hammel for dedicating only



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one paragraph to kumstvo in interethnic relations. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, kumstvo is frequently made between people from different ethnic groups. To give evidence to this claim, in the survey given in 2017 discussed in the previous chapter, one question was, Is your kum or kuma from a different faith? The percentage answering yes was 21.6%. When kumovi are from different faiths, the kinship becomes “a contract of intimacy with the Other,” more likely to exemplify mutual love, friendship, and trust, the traditional values of kumstvo, transcending the utilitarian motives that might guide the establishment of the kinship (HadžiMuhamedović 2018, Chapter 3). HadžiMuhamedović asserts that herein lies the true value of this traditional ritual kinship and herein lies the foundation of social stability in the polyethnic society that is Bosnia-Herzegovina. This significant minority in the population becomes the stabilizing ground for social vitality and healthy interchange in a multiethnic society, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina this foundation was well established especially during the Yugoslav era. HadžiMuhamedović conducted his field study in the Gacko area where many Serbs and Bosniaks were kumovi to each other before the war. Few Croats were inhabitants in this field of study. Two people from different ethnic groups, close friends, perhaps the closest of friends, establish kumstvo to affirm their relationship. When the intimacy is with someone from another ethnic group, the intimacy becomes somehow deeper, more profound. Here kumstvo is bilateral rather than unilateral, affirming equality rather than hierarchy. The social morality for prijatelji is transferred to kumovi. Symmetry rather than asymmetry binds kumovi. What happened to interethnic ritual kinships during the war? As Halilovich and others have pointed out, “The ethnic conflict in Bosnia destroyed many such relationships, which in many cases crossed ethnic lines” (2013, 78). The destruction of this kinship structure may, in fact, be the most fatal one to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a polyethnic society. Relations to a kum or kuma from another ethnic group either persisted or broke down during the war 1992–1995. For many, the thought that it was one’s kum or kuma killing members of one’s family destroyed the ritual kinship. Being harmed, being killed, by one’s sworn kin was unthinkable. The violence was a grotesque violation of trust, but such acts happened throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war. A woman in Sarajevo lost her teenage daughter during the siege of the city that lasted four years. Her daughter was killed by a Serbian sniper in the mountains. The woman’s kuma was Serbian, and they had been close high-school friends in Sarajevo. She, in turn, was her friend’s kuma. Note the bilateral structure. Her kuma left as soon as the war started, and her kuma’s brother became a military officer in the Serbian army that shelled Sarajevo and killed many civilians including her daughter. The woman in

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Sarajevo could not accept that her kuma never called to ask about her daughter after her death or that her kuma’s brother was a military officer in the army that had murdered her daughter and might have been the commander of the soldier who shot her daughter. HadžiMuhamedović reports stories from his fieldwork where a family member was killed through trust (na vjeru). That is, a kum used the trust and respect bestowed upon him to lure family members to their death. There are numerous stories such as these from the war, and many remain on the whole unspeakable. Their painfulness makes them unsharable. The reason the violence during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was so sadistic and cruel was not because interethnic relations were distant and hostile but because the interethnic relations through such traditional kinships were intimate and close (Doubt 2000; 2003). While there are stories of betrayal during the war, there are also stories of loyalty. In some stories, social intimacy across ethnic lines was maintained through kumovi despite ethnic violence. HadžiMuhamedović’s (2018, Chapter 3) work recounts how many of his informants who were Muslim and who were expelled by nationalist Serbs left their gold and tractors at their kum’s house, a trustworthy Serb, for safekeeping. A woman in Sarajevo shared the story of her father and his kum, who was the best man at her parents’ wedding. Her family lived in Prijedor in northwest Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the start of the war, nationalist Serbs established the infamous death camp called Omarska for Bosniak and Croat men and women in the town. The documentary “Calling the Ghost” bears poignant witness to the crimes against humanity at the death camp through profound testimonies of two women who were held and raped in the death camp, Nusreta Sivac and Jadranka Cijelj. Survivors have reported that as many as one hundred people were killed every day. Her father was taken and held in Omarska but survived. While he was in the death camp, his wife died of a heart attack leaving her young children alone and helpless during the ethnic cleansing and violence occurring in the town of Prijedor. The father’s kum, who was an Orthodox Serb, arranged and paid for the funeral of her father’s wife, her mother, while her father was in Omarska. Her father was released. After the war was over, the father returned to Prijedor and met with his kum in a coffee shop. The two sat together in silence for two hours. They then departed without saying a word to one another. Their silence bore witness to the honor of their kumstvo; their departure to its end. There is variation in the Balkans not in the existence of affines and ritual kinship but in the normative orientations that structure these kinship structures. The word prijatelji is used not only in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. The same word with the same



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meaning is used in each country. The variance is not in the term; the variance is in the cultural order and behavioral conduct that gives meaning to the kinship. While economic factors and utilitarian concerns provide motivation and give context to the establishment of both prijatelji and kumovi, the explanation for the cultural norms is not reducible to economic factors or utilitarian concerns. In this case, the constraints of morality precede the constraints of economics. Kinship amity is achieved rather than ascribed, but what is achieved is, in a way, ordained, given the cultural order that encircles the relations (Fortes 1969, 219–249; Bloch 1975). As mentioned, during the war, families in refugee camp forced to flee their home after having suffered great injustices, regained confidence and hope when they reconnected with prijatelji in refugee camps. Reuniting with prijatelji showed families that they were not utterly without social capital after suffering unconscionable violence resulting in the destruction of their homes and community and the deaths of many family members. Indeed, this social capital may have been all that they thought they had left that was of value after suffering immeasurable social harm (Bourdieu 1990). THREE TYPES OF GEMEINSCHAFT A type of social relation that has been critically addressed after the war is komšiluk, which means good neighborliness (Baskar 2012; Hayden 2002). The debate focuses on whether komšiluk exemplifies passive tolerance or active goodwill toward neighbors from different ethnic communities. Xavier Bougarel (see Baskar 2012) argues that komšiluk was not solid enough to withstand social violence. Komšiluk broke down when social order dissolved and self-interest and survival became paramount. The idea of komšiluk reflects Emile Rousseau’s innocent understanding of human nature in the state of nature untainted and undamaged by negative social forces. Once the Hobbesian logic looms on the horizon and competition for scarce resources reigns, good neighborliness disappears. A counter to the negative formulation of the fragility of komšiluk is found in the work of Svetlana Broz (2004). Her book, Good People in an Evil Time, indicates that during the evil time of war, people in Bosnia-Herzegovina acted with goodwill, interpersonal courage, and mutual trust toward members of other ethnic groups. People remained committed to the relation of komšiluk even as the Yugoslav state collapsed. An immense minority, if one will, from each side of the war offered timely support, safety, understanding, and goodwill to neighbors from other communities in distress and need. Rousseau’s

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understanding of human nature persevered in the midst of the Hobbesian jungle. This study addresses the comparative types of social solidarity that arise through kinship. What komšiluk, kumovi, and prijatelji have in common is that they are different representations of what Ferdinand Tönnies calls gemeinschaft, the German word for a close, intimate, organic community as opposed to gesellschaft, a modern, utilitarian oriented society. Tönnies formulates three kinds of gemeinschaft or three types of social solidarity in a community. First, there is gemeinschaft by blood, denoting unity of agnatic kin, called bratstvo in Serbia (Simic 1971; Hammel 1968). Nationalists, whether Serbian, Croatian, or Bosniak, idealize this type of solidarity. Second, there is gemeinschaft of mind, which indicates cooperation and coordinated action for a common goal. Neighbors coordinate actions in the interest of a common good, where their mutual goodwill is the mindfulness that is shared. The social solidarity of Yugoslavia with its motto, “Brotherhood and Unity,” was a strong example of this second type of solidarity where what was revered by each ethnic group was the Partisan history during World War II. Numerous monuments, much literature, and many Partisan films commemorate the defeat of the Germans and the birth of the Yugoslav state. Third, there is the gemeinschaft of kin, which signifies a common relation to human beings themselves, developed through affinal relations, which is the primary subject of this study. It will be neither the structure of the Dayton Peace Accords nor international or local politicians that will keep a complicated and complex society like Bosnia-Herzegovina together; it will be the strength of a particular kind of gemeinschaft. Nationalism, which now dominates the political and social landscape of the Balkans, believes that gemeinschaft of blood is the most supreme form of gemeinschaft; it thus undermines as secondary both gemeinschaft of common mind and gemeinschaft of humanity. In his critique of Samuel Huntington’s “the clash of civilizations,” Keith Brown (2005, 44) writes, “His formulation of the power of kinship draws on a model that emphasizes the importance of common descent over marriage.” Despite current political practices, this type of gemeinschaft will neither build nor hold together Bosnian society for any ethnic group, no matter how strongly ethnic politicians advocate for this type of solidarity. Second, scholars point out that gemeinschaft of common mind is limited by its pragmatic and circumstantial conditions where the self-interest of individuals at some point overrules the common mind (Hayden 2002). The Hobbesian account of social order is realistic; the Rousseauian account is not. Third, gemeinschaft of kin, which, according to Tönnies (1957), is the most human truly supreme form of gemeinschaft, is developed most concertedly through affinal relations and ritual



National Identities in Kinship: The Case of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 73

kinship. The latter is the distinctive cultural heritage of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This type of gemeinschaft is the most stable and, ultimately, a model for the other types of gemeinschaft (Tönnies 1957). As long as Bosnian society sustains this third type of gemeinschaft in its parallel and interdependent ways and does not seek to oppose one mythical descent line with another, the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina is promising, an opinion that goes sharply against current, leading commentaries on the social and political future of the country. War destroys ethnic, racial, or religious communities. The destruction is not only physical, but also social. Not only are human lives lost, but also cultural customs and social heritages. They disappear. Although the recent war in Bosnia-Herzegovina impacted the kinship patterns studied here, the kinship customs preserve and now regenerate Bosnian culture and society, despite the willfulness of ethno-politicians. It is important to understand the cultural significance of various kinships in Bosnia-Herzegovina and comprehend the promise of restoring and supporting them. It is important not to deny in scholarly discourse what was viciously denied by political propaganda and social violence. In the next chapter, we will focus on the family in a polyethnic society through the lens of ethnopedagogy, the study of ethically principled upbringing and socialization, which the family in every ethnic community takes up as a social action and responsibility. That is, we turn to the hearth that serves as the bedrock of kinship, a place where the deep concern of the family is the spiritual growth of the child instilled with a sense of goodness and love.

Chapter Five

The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

ETHNOPEDAGOGY Contemporary pedagogy as a science has been going through a crisis similar to that of other humanistic sciences.1 Humanity faces problems that indirectly and directly relate to education. Attempts to resolve these problems and challenges often, especially in the so-called transitional societies, end up as unsuccessful reforms of the formal educational system, especially in the area of intercultural education and socialization in multicultural and post-conflict environments. This failure has led to the beginning of a new discipline. Ethnopedagogy began in the second part of the 20th century as a result of efforts to study folk pedagogy scientifically and apply the results to the contemporary system of education (Tufekčić 2003; 2012; 2014a; 2014b). As a relatively new and modern discipline, the roots of ethnopedagogy are found in both anthropology and ethnology. The term ethnopedagogy, as the name for a scientific discipline, was first coined by G. N. Volkov, a well-known Russian professor of pedagogy, who lived from 1927 until 2010. He explains ethnopedagogy as the history and theory of ethnic education, that is, a science that studies people’s upbringing, native pedagogical views, and everyday educational practices within the family and the community. The pedagogical culture of people in everyday life resides in the material and spiritual sphere of culture that is connected with the phenomenon of upbringing. Pedagogical culture is closely connected to all spheres of human life and has a synthetic character. The preservation and development of a spiritual culture is unimaginable without adequate and developed pedagogical practices. The focus of any pedagogical culture is a child’s successful upbringing. By accounting for the essence of upbringing, one sees the unique aspects of pedagogical culture of different people and so humanity in general. 75

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All people exemplify original as well as universal achievements that are related to the upbringing of a person. The specificity of a pedagogical culture is evident in the process of upbringing where people gather spiritual wealth from generation to generation and from changing, improving, developing, and enriching pedagogical practices. Every upbringing aims for the integral unity of the social and the personal, which generates the feeling of belonging to society in every person and gives social identity to the work and behavior of the individual. Every person has been brought up and every person will bring another up. Upbringing includes not only a people but also a human as well as natural environment. Most everything that surrounds people is somehow related to the aims of upbringing. Pedagogical knowledge stands in close relationship to life philosophy, morality, and a general knowledge of people. Through folk pedagogy, one can witness the work and action of upbringing where educators are craftsmen, singers, storytellers, namely, those who have concrete and practical abilities. The essence and direction of upbringing for all people is the upbringing that shows by virtuous examples what is good and exemplifies genuine love (Tufekčić and Doubt 2017). The subject of our concluding chapter is some ethnopedagogical problems of upbringing in the traditional Bosnian-Herzegovinian culture through the example of one small rural community which includes several villages (Zahirovići, Kurtići, Straža, Jasenica) in the northwestern side of mountain Majevica in the northeastern part of Bosnia. This community is multilateral, and it includes settlements with Muslim (Bosniaks), Catholics (Croatians), and Orthodox (Serbian) population. The field is an ideal site to study the social solidarity of a polyethnic society. The collection and processing of relevant data that are related to the ethnopedagogical problems of upbringing in the traditional Bosnian-Herzegovinian society through an example of this case study of a multilateral social community make it possible to see the important processes of forming a person. This fieldwork gathered, studied, and popularized geographically concrete traditions of pedagogical culture in a region that included several villages in the same vicinity. Studying the concrete traditional pedagogical culture in Bosnia-Herzegovina is an important task for ethnopedagogy. The more the research is concrete and detailed in regards to specific areas and regions of our country, the greater the value it will have for development of ethnopedagogy in the scientific community. In taking the ethnopedagogical approach to culture, the past should not be idealized. The main goal of folk pedagogy is the spiritual growth of the human being with the largest and most gentle ethical values. As a means of upbringing, people use different styles of verbal creation such as proverbs, riddles, songs, fairy tales, and stories. The important com-



The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina 77

ponent of the proverb is its lesson, its explanation. In the proverb, there is much educational material. Through the proverb, one sees pedagogical ideas that are related to a child’s birth and place in life. The proverb provides the goals, means, and methods of upbringing. It engages in encouragement and; punishment, provides the content of education, work, and moral upbringing, and gives the child an inheritance from the parent’s own characteristics and behavior. In the riddle, one finds a combination of influences on the child’s understanding of the world with the goal of establishing an intellectual upbringing that is in harmony with all other aspects of personality formation. The Lullaby The role of the song is likewise enormous. The main task of the song is to develop a love of beauty, building up aesthetic views and tastes. The pedagogical value of the song is that in singing one internalizes what is beautiful and good. The goal and function of the lullaby is, before all else, to calm a child and help the child to go to sleep. Makers of lullabies are mothers and grandmothers, and everyone who takes care of children uses them as well. In the lullaby, there is an optimal balance between thoughts, actions, and mood. The lullaby is an amazing achievement of ethnopedagogy. We thus give attention to odgajalice (songs that have an educational message), njihalice (songs used to rock a child to sleep), and pošalice (songs that have a funny or ironic tone to them). The song is a clear example of the complex system of aesthetic and ethical upbringing in a community. We note that fairy tales and stories have for centuries been an important means of upbringing. The role of the fairy tale is educational because it has didactic value. Although all fairy tales contain different didactic elements, there are fairy tales that are thoroughly dedicated to some moral problem. Bešika (wooden cradle) has a significant place in the traditional culture having both a practical and a symbolic meaning. See Figure 5.1. Traditional beliefs are that the development of the child’s basic personal characteristics are connected to the cradle. Bešika is also connected with patterns of putting the baby to sleep. Women who put babies to sleep will sing and make up various forms of lullabies. This means that lullabies are appropriate and women make them up while putting the child to sleep. We present some of the most common lullabies in all three ethnic communities below. In Muslim communities, putting the baby to sleep in bešika and lullabies are mostly connected to religious content. One of the most common lullabies in the Muslim population is perhaps this one: When I went to a mosque. I met our prophet.

Figure 5.1.   Bešika, wooden cradle. Source: Authors’ original photo.



The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina 79

Our prophet, our Muhammed. Where he met me, he told me. We will all die. We will all lie in a pit. There is nothing but a pit. Neither doors, nor windows. There are three lightnings in heaven. There is an almond tree in heaven. Our prophet sits under the tree. (Tufekčić 2012, 127–130)

Another form of this lullaby is concerned with the death of a child in early childhood: When I went to a mosque I met our Muhammed Our Muhammed, our prophet Where he met me, he told me Slave, you know you will die Do you know we must die We must turn into a pit. We must speak from the pit. The pit is no ordinary house. Neither doors, nor window. A window opened. An almond orchard appeared. With a clear water course. Small school children walked. Each carrying a glass of juice. For their mothers to drink. Their mothers and godmothers. Their juice glasses broken down. Sprinkled with hemp dust. Their mothers sew on Fridays. They sew on Fridays, spin on Fridays. Their juice glasses broken down. Sprinkled with hemp dust. (Tufekčić 2012, 127–130)

In this lullaby, the belief represented is that women whose young child has died should not sew or weave on Fridays. Besides this lullaby, women sing ilahije (Muslim religious songs) while rocking the child in bešika (cradle). Besides ilahije, we found in our examinees’ stories that this lullaby is also used (in authentic form): Sleep, baby, sleep, my precious gold. Mother kisses your sweet lips. (Tufekčić 2014a, 73–75)

Chapter Five

80

Besides singing lullabies, women would učile (read, recite) a sura (certain chapters from the Qur’an) in order to protect the child from evil influences and doings. This shows that much attention was paid to the act of putting the baby to sleep, since the baby was considered vulnerable to naude i uroke (hexes and curses) while asleep and needed to be protected. In the Catholic and Orthodox population, the child is pjevalo i tepalo (sung and prattled to) while putting it to sleep in the cradle. Apart from prayers with religious content, the following lullabies are sung and prattled to babies (in original, authentic form): Sleep baby, lullaby, I sleep too. Lullaby, mother cradles her son. Mother feeds her son in a small crib. Mother feeds her son for seven years. Lullaby, a crib full of pegs. Lullaby, a crib full of teeth. Lullaby, sleep tight. Lullaby, my destiny. Lullaby, mother’s lullaby. Sleep, sleep, lullaby. Lullaby, mother’s delight, a crib full of pegs. Lullaby, mother’s delight, a crib full of teeth. Sleep, sleep, my baby. Your mother puts you to sleep. (Tufekčić 2014a, 73–75)

In all three ethnic communities, there are common elements in lullaby forms, such as: nina, buba, spavaj, u beši. The difference in content related to lullabies in Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox populations lies in different religious prayers. CURSES AND HEXES In all three ethnic communities, special attention is paid to uroci i naude (curses and hexes), which are believed to be able to hurt the child’s health and



The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina 81

life. It is believed that small children are susceptible to bad influences mostly from women with an evil eye. The belief among those women is that there are those who wanted purposely to hurt the child. In most cases, it is known who these women are and children are kept away from them. So, the belief is, if the situation happened where the child was urekne (cursed) and naudi (hexed), then uroci bi prekidali djecu (curses would harm children), which could lead even to the death of children. Here is why attention is given to preventing nauda and uroka, as well as healing the child from them. Here are some of the ways of prevention and healing that are used by members of all three ethnic communities. In the Muslim population, children are given zapis, which is supposed to protect the child. Besides zapis, which is written by a hodzˇa (village holy man), there were other, so to say, folk zapisi. For members of all three ethnic communities, there is a belief that the remainder of the umbilical cord, which fell off from the child, had special protecting characteristics, so zapis was also made from it and it protected children from uroci. Zapis from the umbilical cord would be put on the child’s cap. In the Catholic population it is believed that a needle should be put through the child’s clothing upside down, with the needle tip upwards, so that nothing can hurt the child. For children who are under a curse učena je i dova uročnica, folk prayers against curses are recited to them. While reciting the following prayer, women use tespih sa pet dova (5 connected tasbihs to get one long tasbih; tasbih is a Muslim rosary). Uročnica which is učila (recited) to the child is called Uročnica od devet braće, koja glasi (Tufekčić 2012). Prayer for healing of curses from nine brothers Eight out of nine, Seven out of eight, Six out of seven, Five out of six, Four out of five, Three out of four, Two out of three, One out of two, One as no one, Let curses go down the water like wind goes upstream. (Tufekčić 2012, 73–75)

After this, the child is considered cured. Prayers against curses are recited also while putting the child to sleep and are often a replacement for lullabies. Besides protecting children from curses, attention is given to their physical and spiritual health. It is believed that a child will be smarter if the piece of umbilical cord which served as zapis is thrown into running water (river, brook, etc.). Along with dove uročnice, a special procedure is used to cure

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fear and restlessness in children, named in folk as ižljevanje/saljevanje strave (special procedure in folk medicine where heated and melted piece of lead would be carried around the child and afterwards immersed in a bowl of cold water). During this, the melted lead becomes solid. By the appearance of the cold solid piece of lead, the existence of a fear or spiritual restlessness is interpreted, as well as its cure. Most commonly, children from all three ethnic communities are taken to Muslim women who are good at saljevati stravu in a small village Kurtići. See Figure 5.2. The mere act of ižljevanja strave is the same for all three ethnic (religious) groups; only prayers to God are different with regard to different religious teachings. Here, acculturation elements can be noticed, which are related to the belief by all three ethnic groups that ižljevanje strave helps children and their spiritual health. Attention is not paid to the religion of the woman who would ižljevati stravu to the child; it is important that she knew how to do it. There is a belief that this procedure will have better results when special prayers for Christian children and dove (Muslim prayers for Muslim children) are recited, while following guidelines of a certain religious teaching—all teachings had the same significance. The woman who performed ižljevanje strave believes that strava will be successful when prayers are recited for the child, by its religious teaching. In the case that a child gets a high temperature, in the Catholic and Orthodox population, pork fat is often used and spread on a rag or paper, then used as covering on the child’s body, mostly chest and feet. In folk pedagogy, language is an important factor of upbringing. In relation to this, there are various forms of oral influence on the feelings, cognition, and behavior of the person: explanations, counseling, messages, verifications, allusions, lessons, approvals, judgments, reprehension, threats, wishes, pledges, orders, and sermons. Work takes a central place in ethnopedagogy. Traditional upbringing gives important value to work, both paid and volunteer. Social relations and contacts are partly determined by the basic postures of ethnopsychology, which are related to the expressing and showing of emotions. Interpersonal relations in the social community are basically determined by the family tradition that has always been the most powerful among village families. Ethnic tradition is a kind of connection between generations, and it is a ground for the spiritual-moral life of people. Religion in ethnic upbringing is also a center of the factors that influence spirituality of a person. There are no factors or means of ethnic upbringing that exist independently, moving away from one another. In this manner, everything is connected in folk pedagogy, and it has a unique influence on every person. In the social history of every nation people have used moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical modes of educating. Years of folk pedagogy have crys-



The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina 83

tallized the ideal means and methods of influencing a person. Having this in mind, we can say that in traditional rural Bosnian-Herzegovinian culture, daily life is a haven of ethnic pedagogical practices. These practices are born out of one concrete community and included a total life cycle from birth to death. In every life situation upbringing is evident in influencing the creation of harmonious relationships between individuals and communities. All phases and processes of growing up and upbringing with the traditional, rural culture at its base had acculturative moments, but not complete acculturation processes because we are not talking about connection between totally different cultures. Actually, we are speaking about the meeting of different elements of culture as well as contact between different religious teachings, which were the ground source of specific factors that influence the processes of growing up and upbringing. This is because there is an overlap of joint traditional cultural elements in different ethnic groups. There is a space of interpersonal merging and shaping of different elements of traditional culture and religious teaching. In the words of one informant who was interviewed during the research: “And God said: ‘If you are good according to people (all ethnic groups), then you are good according to me, if people (all ethnic groups) love you, then I love you. God is most merciful. How much is a mother to her baby gracious, God is again seventy times more gracious according to his servant (human being) without differences of a man’s faith. This is God’s creation . . . Let the man be good whatever faith he is.” NOTE 1. Parts of this chapter were previously published in “The Ethnopedagogical Mosaic of Bosnia and Herzegovina” in Spirit of Bosnia / Duh Bosne, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2014 and in “Growing Up and Upbringing in a Traditional Bosnian-Herzegovinian Family,” Family Upbringing: The Identities of Families at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014. Republished with permission.

Conclusion

BOSNIA AND JOB One overlooked casualty of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 is its collective commitment to a pluralistic and integrated society. Unconscionable violence and vicious propaganda were brought to bear against Bosnia-Herzegovina’s heritage, cultural convictions, and social practices. The result is Bosnia-Herzegovina’s trans-ethnic traditions, cultures, and histories are damaged. The tragedy is that, although Bosnia-Herzegovina has a trans-ethnic history, there are few trans-ethnic institutions to support, respect, and sustain these traditions. The signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in Dayton, Ohio in 1995 established a constitution and federal structure that reifies ethnic particularism at the political level and denies the polyethnic realities of the country, its inhabitants, and its civil society. To note one political issue, since a Bosnian Jew or Bosnian Romani is neither a Bosniak, Croat, or Serb, someone from these minority groups is prohibited from becoming president of Bosnia-Herzegovina or holding a position in the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Dayton Peace Accords violate the democratic rights of the Bosnians who do not fall into the three dominant ethnic categories (Mujkić 2008; Bardutzky 2010). A common political view of Bosnia-Herzegovina is that it was a miniYugoslavia. Since Yugoslavia did not remain a united country after the death of Tito, neither could Bosnia-Herzegovina. As cited previously, Ivo Banac (1993, 139) critiques this view of the collective identity of Bosnia-Herzegovina vis-à-vis the Yugoslav collective identity: If Bosnia were a collectivity of separate entities, then it would have been a miniYugoslavia. But it is not that. Bosnia is a historical entity which has its own 85

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identity and its own history . . . I view Bosnia as primarily a functioning society which Yugoslavia never was. My question is how does one keep a complicated, complex identity like Bosnia-Herzegovina together?

In a sociological study using a statistical analysis, Randy Hodson, Dusko Sekulić, and Garth Massey (1994) found that in comparison to other republics and autonomous regions in Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most tolerant. Not only Bosniaks as the majority group but also Serbs as the principal minority group were more tolerant than any other ethnic group in comparison with all other republics and autonomous regions throughout Yugoslavia. Hodson, Sekulić, and Massey, however, conclude their study this way: “Bosnia enjoyed the highest level of tolerance of any Yugoslav republic, but this increased tolerance proved insufficient to outweigh the political forces emanating from its extremely diverse social fabric” (1994, 1555). In contrast, we see this extremely diverse social fabric as a positive human value and the foundation of solidarity in this polyethnic society. The normative order of the kinship culture, its authority, weaves together the extremely diverse social fabric in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This unique sense of cultural and social solidarity did not fall victim despite suffering immense social violence and damage to its community. Hodson, Sekulić, and Massey’s inference mines the nationalist narrative against Bosnia. Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a mini-Yugoslavia with a supra-ethnic identity reflecting Yugoslavism (Djokić 2003). Nor is it a mixed bag of mono-ethnic entities. Bosnia-Herzegovina has a collective personality reflective of its history. Bosnia’s enigmatic mixture of historical epochs (a distinctive medieval period from the 13th to 15th centuries, the Ottoman Empire starting in the 15th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the 19th century, and communist Yugoslavia during the 20th century) structures this collective personality (Malcolm 1996). Ethnic personality is the exemplification of socially meaningful behavior (Devereux 1975). Since religion (Catholicism, Islam, Orthodoxy) rather than observable racial differences distinguishes Bosnia’s ethnic groups, ethnic personalities are associated with religious traditions. Bosniaks are Muslims and follow a certain set of religious observances; Croats are Catholic and follow another set of religious observances; and Serbs are Orthodox and follow another set of religious observances. While religious traditions inform the ethnic differences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, their ethnic personalities result in overlapping and common cultures in everyday life and shared customs. While studies of ethnicity typically focus on identities as a nominal variable, Rogers Brubaker (2003, 185–186) argues that it is more fruitful to focus on the social practices and everyday practices that inform ethnic personalities:



Conclusion 87

What are we studying when we study ethnicity and ethnic conflict? . . . it may be more productive to focus on practical categories, cultural idioms, schema, common-sense knowledge, organizational routines and resources, discursive frames, institutionalized forms, political projects, contingent events and variable groupness. It may be that ‘ethnicity’ is simply a convenient—though in certain respects misleading—rubric under which to group phenomena that, on the one hand, are highly disparate and, on the other, have a great deal in common with phenomena that are not ordinarily subsumed under the rubric of ethnicity.

Exemplifying Brubaker’s advice, our study has focused on the practical categories of different types of kinship and marriage customs and their normative structures vis-à-vis ethnicity. The approach places ethnicity in a wider cultural context with various cultural idioms, social rituals, and discursive frames without devaluing the phenomenon of ethnicity itself. We thus are able to show how ethnicity is socially constructed through the cultural rather than the political order, where in the latter ethnicity is an isolated and nominal value. By focusing on the cultural order instead, we show ethnicity’s direct correlation to such everyday social practices as marriage and kinship ties and not only ethnic but also national identities. Sometimes, for cultural reasons, national identities trump ethnic identities. Sometimes, for political reasons, ethnic identities trump national identities. After the succession wars in former Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide were widely studied. We note a mixed group of academic works (Banac 1993; Bećirević 2014; Broz 2004; Doubt 2007; Campbell 1998; Djokić 2003; HadžiMuhamedović 2018; Halilovich 2013; Hayden 1994; Hodson, Sekulić, and Massey 1994; Jansen 2015; Komšić 2013; Lukk and Doubt 2015; Mahmutćehajić 2000a; 2000b; Malcolm 1996; Ramet 1992; Silber and Little 1996; Simic 1991). Rather than revisit these subjects, this study has been about something resilient within the society of Bosnia-Herzegovina, that is, the degree to which its inhabitants share a heritage and culture despite suffering immense social violence and a crushing destruction of their national institutions. The Dayton Peace Accords are best described as a straitjacket, written by foreigners with orientalist perspectives charmed by the nationalist arguments of Bosnia’s enemies, creating a new Bosnian constitution and state structure ex nihilo. Every time a positive and progressive initiative is taken, the straitjacket tightens, resulting in no movement at all or great pain whenever movement is attempted. Because of these political knots that cannot be untied while the Dayton Peace Accords remain in force, Bosnia is unable to take even the first step into the EU. Bosnia must watch Croatia and Serbia, her former enemies who were directly and aggressively responsible for the war crimes and crimes against humanity it suffered, gain this state privilege with

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its social and economic benefits while Bosnia works as best it can to recover from the aftermath of an unconscionable war. The war was stopped, but not its unconscionable character. Bosnia’s situation reminds us of the story of Job in the Old Testament, a scripture important to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Although having suffered much, people in Bosnia remained convinced of their righteousness, closeness to God, and knowledge of justice. This study seeks to demonstrate the ontological and epistemological reasons for this. Europe, the United States, and Turkey remind us of Job’s interlocutors (Elihu, Zophar, Bildad, and Eliphaz): These countries come for a time and suggest to Bosnians in various rhetorical and artful ways that there must be something wrong here with them. “Surely,” Job’s interlocutors said to Job, “you somehow are responsible for your suffering.” And Bosnians, like Job, answer, we are not. In the end, the Lord blesses Job. And the Lord asks Job to bless his detractors as well.

Appendix A

Glossary of Affinal Terms

amidža—brother of father amidžinica—wife of father’s brother stric—brother of father strina—wife of father’s brother ujak—brother of mother ujna—wife of mother’s brother dajdža—brother of mother dajdžinica/dajnica—wife of mother’s brother punac—wife’s father punica—wife of wife’s father svekar—father of husband svekrva—wife of husband’s father bratić—son of brother bratična/bratišna—daughter of brother djever—brother of husband jetrva—wife of husband’s brother prija—mother of son-in-law or daughter-in-law prijatelji—in-lawship involving the husband and wife’s family prijateljstvo—collective noun for prijatelji prika/prijatelj—father of son-in-law or daughter-in-law sestrić—son of sister sestrična—daughter of sister snaha—daughter-in-law or sister-in-law svastika—sister of one’s wife tazbina—wife’s family zaova—sister of one’s husband zet—son-in-law 89

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oroditi se—to build relations with affines pohode—affinal visitation prvine (išla u prvine)—affinal visitation sijelo—picnic gathering svadba—wedding ceremony

Appendix B

Summary of Cross Tabulations for Affinal Visitations Ten or More Times a Year

Yes’s for Affinal Visitations Ten or More Times a Year Married Divorced Widowed

64.2% 36.8% 64.2%*

Traditional wedding No traditional wedding

65% 56.5%*

Eloped to marry Did not elope to marry

62.7% 62%

Siblings eloped to marry Siblings did not elope

64.3% 61.3%

Mother eloped to marry Mother did not elope

60.1% 63.4%

Strong faith conviction Weak faith conviction

64.9% 53.1%*

Age 18-36 Age 37-51 Age 52-88

60.4% 62.2% 63.6%

High school education No high school education

63.4% 62.4%

Higher income Lower income

66.1% 66.6%

Bosniak Croat Serb

57.6% 58.9% 70.6%*

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2017, Open ICPSR. Chi-square tests for statistical significance, * p < .001

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Appendix C

Summary of Log-Linear Tables in Chapter Three

For each dependent variable and each subgroup (if appropriate), the comparison of the proportion of Yes’s among the three nationalities (abbreviated C, B, and S for Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs, respectively) is given symbolically. “C > B” means that the proportion of Yes’s for Croats is higher than for Bosniaks, “B = S” means that the proportion of Yes’s for Bosniaks does not differ significantly from that of Serbs, etc. Dependent Variable

Subgroup

Proportion of Yes’s

Engagement Party

Young Middle Age Older, Poor Older, Wealthy Young Middle Age Older

C>B>S C>B=S C>B=S C=B=S B>C B>C>S B>C=S C=B=S C=B=S BC=B C=B=S CB=C C=B=S S>C=B

Elopement

Parents Visit 4+ Best Man Visits 4+

Homogamy

Young Middle Age Older Young, More Religious Young, Less Religious Middle Age Older, More Religious Older, Less Religious

Source: Self-Reported Marriage Practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2014, Open ICPSR. Log-linear analysis conducted by Harry Khamis, Professor of Statistics, Wright State University

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Index

Abelson, Robert, 59 affinal visitations, 6, 40–44, 47, 50, 54, 90, 91 affines, 29, 31–40, 44, 54, 68, 70, 90 agnatic kinship, 35, 44, 67 Aljamiado literature, 24 authentic syncretism, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21–22, 25, 27, 29 Banac, Ivo, 4, 85, 87 Barth, Fredrik, 1, 57 Botev, Nikolai, 56–57, 59 Bourdieu, Pierre, 31, 37, 71 bride thief or bride abduction, otmica, 3, 40–41 Bringa, Tone, 1–3, 31, 32, 33, 38, 41, 44, 50, 53–54, 57, 66–67 Brown, Keith, 72 Broz, Svetlana, 21, 71, 87 Brubaker, Rogers, 86–87 Butler, Thomas, 18–19 Dayton Peace Accords, 60, 72, 85, 87 death, 12, 14, 21–22, 37, 40, 70–71, 79, 81, 83, 85 Donia, Robert, 5, 31, 54 Duby, George, 37, 44–45 Dundes, Alan, 22 Durkheim, Émile, 48–49, 61

elopement, ukrala se, 3, 6–7, 37, 40–41, 47, 49–50, 53–54, 93 Erlich, Vera Stein, 2–3, 14, 22, 64 ethnicity, 43–44, 47–48, 50–55, 58, 86–87 ethnopedagogy, 7, 73, 75–77, 82, 103–104 Filipović, Milenko, 2, 11, 13–14, 18, 22, 40, 50, 55–56 folklore, 2, 6, 11, 13–14, 19–22, 28, 32, 64, 104 Foucault, Michel, 19–22, 25 gemeinschaft, 71–73 Gramsci, Antonio, 14, 21, 28 HadžiMuhamedović, Safet, 63–64, 68–70, 87 Halilovich, Hariz, 67, 69, 87 Halpern, Joel M., 2, 67 Hammel, Eugene, 2, 11, 35, 44, 50, 55, 65–68, 72 Hayden, Robert, 2, 71–72, 87 heterotopia, 19, 20, hexes, 80 Hodson, Randy, 33, 48, 56–57, 60, 86–87 homogamy, 47, 49–50, 56–58, 93 Hörman, Kosta, 63 103

104

Index

interethnic kinship, 14, 68–70 Kaser, Karl, 2, 4, 35 kumovi, ritual kinship, 6, 55, 61, 63–72 Levi–Strauss, Claude, 32, 65 Lockwood, William G., 2–3, 31, 38, 41, 44, 48, 50, 53–54, 57, 68 lullabies, 77, 80–81 Mahmutčehajić, Rusmir, 60, 87 Malcolm, Noel, 9, 86–87 Marx, Karl, 48 mechanical solidarity, 48–49, 51, 59–61 Merton, Robert, 6 Middle Ages in Bosnia–Herzegovina, 37–38, 45 Moranjak–Bamburać, Nirman, 24–25 Nagel, Joan, 52, 55–56 organic solidarity, 48–49, 60–61 panethnicity, 45, 47–51, 53, 55–57, 59–62 pobro or blood brother, 11–15, 17–18, 22 polyethnic society, 1, 6, 33, 38, 49, 57, 60, 69, 73, 76, 86

prijatelji, in–lawship, 3, 33–34, 36–38, 40, 50, 54–55, 61, 64–72, 89 Ramet, Sabrina, 60, 87 ritual kinship, 6, 12, 14, 32, 44, 50, 56, 61, 63–65, 68–70 Said, Edward, 6 Schneider, David M., 32, 34 Simic, Andrei, 2, 44, 48, 50, 55, 67, 72, 87 statistics, 6, 38, 45, 59, 93 Strong, Pauline Turner, 13–14, 22 svadba, traditional wedding, 3, 40, 67, 90 Tekçe, Belgin, 51 Tomašić, Dinko A., 2, 35 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 72–73 Turkey, 36, 41, 49, 51, 88 Turner, Victor W., 13 Vlaisavljević, Ugo, 21 Voloder, Lejla, 36 Weber, Max, 32, 39, 48, 101 Yugoslavism, 34, 48–49, 57–58, 60, 86

About the Authors

Keith Doubt holds his master’s and doctorate degrees from York University, Toronto, Canada. He has published articles on a range of sociological theorists: Harold Garfinkel, Georg Simmel, Hans-Georg Gadamer, George Herbert Mead, Jürgen Habermas, Talcott Parsons, Erving Goffman, and Kenneth Burke. He is the author of Towards a Sociology of Schizophrenia: Humanistic Reflections (University of Toronto Press), Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice (Rowman & Littlefield), Sociologija nakon Bosne (Buybook, Sarajevo), Understanding Evil: Lessons from Bosnia (Fordham University Press), and Through the Window: Kinship and Elopement in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Central European University Press). He is editor of the interdisciplinary, bilingual online journal, Duh Bosne / Spirit of Bosnia. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Faculty of Political Science at University of Sarajevo in 2001 and held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Department of Sociology at University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2007. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Flex Grant, involving both teaching and research in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Adnan Tufekčić holds his master’s and doctorate degrees from University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His research interest lies in the study of the authentic traditional Bosnian culture and society. He is recognized as a world expert on ethnopedagogy, a relatively new and modern discipline that studies people’s upbringings as a morally guided practice, explicates people’s pedagogical views in their everyday life-world, and observes the educational practices of the family and local community. He has published articles on ethnopedagogy and traditional Bosnian culture and is the author of Osnove etnopedagogije [The Basics of Ethnopeda105

106

About the Authors

gogy] (Dobra Knjiga i Centar za Napredne Studije, Sarajevo). In his teaching of ethnopedagogy, he, together with his students, conducts terrain researches on various topics of Bosnian traditional culture such as patterns of traditional upbringing, the ethical values embedded in upbringing, the organization of family life and intrafamily relations, the transgenerational transmission of cultural values, interethnic and interreligious relationships, Bosnian syncretism and traditional folklore, customs, and cultural patterns. He is a member of the Board for Pedagogical Disciplines at the Academy of Science and Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is professor of pedagogy and ethnopedagogy in the faculty of humanities and social sciences at University of Tuzla.