"Collapse or Destruction? The Construction of the Yugoslav Wars"
Chip Gagnon

Paper presented at National Convention of AAASS, Boston, Mass., November 15, 1996

Draft: Please do not cite without author's permission

Culture as Communication

So what is ethnicity? What is an ethnic group? If ethnicity is not affect and overriding solidarity, if it is not an interest, what is it? How can we incorporate ethnicity into our understanding of politics and war? Being a Serb does mean sharing something, perhaps “culture” and feelings of commonality or bonds with other Serbs; but it does not a priori mean sharing a specific interest, especially not one of violence and warfare against civilians. Indeed, there is enormous diversity among Serbs in Yugoslavia, ranging from rural highlanders in Kosovo and Bosnia to cosmopolitan urbanites in Belgrade and Zagreb. But some people do identify as Serbs; it’s not unreal. The approaches described above assume that the group defined ethnically is natural; that people share an essential sameness because they "are" Serbs, and they have a common interest based on that common attribute. (This image is reinforced and institutionalized by international norms, eg. self-determination of peoples, although “peoples” is not defined. It is assumed to be obvious.) But without denying the reality of individuals' identification with a particular culture, it is difficult to define exactly what the common interest of a cultural group is; as the cases cited above demonstrate, a definition in essentialist terms of interest is a contructed image rather than an objective, natural reality.

From a methodological viewpoint alone such images of national or ethnic groups with identifiable and objective interests are clearly ideological in nature. Appeals to such imagery are in fact political behaviors, influence attempts meant to achieve specific political ends vis-à-vis particular target audiences, often domestic ones. If the group is defined in essentialist terms of common interest, then those who speak in the name of the group hold all the cards, and can use the privileging of security as a way to silence internal contestation and difference. This is especially the case if the image of common interest is based on an external threat to the culture or very existence of the putative group. In fact, the perception of just such a threat is perhaps the only plausible situation in which the argument of common interest may be accurate. Yet even in such extreme cases as threatened annihilation of a cultural group, the existence of an objective way to deal with this common interest of survival cannot be assumed. The example of the Bosnian Muslims is particularly instructive. Despite being subjected to massacres and atrocities that were part of an attempt to destroy them as a people, even within the SDA (the Bosnian Muslim party) there existed very strong differences of opinion about how best to ensure the interest of the Bosnian Muslims as a group, even at the time of worst fighting: some called for the formation of a Muslim mini-state; others insisted on the maintenance of a multi-ethnic Bosnian state. So in what way is Bosnian Muslim culture a determinant of specific policies or interests including vis-à-vis other cultures, even at times of existential threat?

The challenge is conceptual: how can we think of culture in terms other than interest, in a way that does not reify groups and interest, and in a way that enables an integration of culture into political behavior? My point of departure is that definitions of national or ethnic groups stress commonality or sharing: of culture, of language, of religion, of historical experience. One common definition of culture (among many) focuses on it as a system of communication or meaning, or as a frame of reference.[20] This particular definition seems particularly apt for discussions of the relationship between culturally defined communities and politics, because politics is essentially about communication.

We can thus think about culturally-defined groupness in terms of a shared system of communications, or as a kind of "language." People who share a common culture share a similar way of expressing similar sentiments or thoughts. Specific words, gestures and behaviors have a relatively common or shared meaning. If people sharing a culture also perceive that they have experienced a common history, then they also share a frame of reference in terms of the past. What links people who identify with the same nationally- or ethnically-defined culture is not that they "are" the same, or that they share the same interest, but that they share a common system of communication or set of references.

Such a conceptualization seems more flexible and therefore more able to reflect the realities of identities: they are multiple, overlapping, porous and often changeable. It also does not discount the reality of an individual's identification with a particular culture, or her feelings of commonality with others who share that culture. Indeed, such a way of thinking about culture helps explain the importance of such identification. Because it conceives of groupness not as due to an attribute or interest but as a kind of relationship, it is also better able to capture the reality of inner-group diversity, and thus help us rethink the link between culture and the construction of the image of group interest.

The shared system of communication or references is the vehicle by which one expresses one’s values or interests. It is a common frame of reference within which those who share a common culture discuss, struggle, resolve conflicts. The interest or value does not arise in and of itself from the specific language one uses. Rather, the culture is the vehicle by which we express ourselves, in which we contest interests and values. All of the diverse members of a group defined culturally use a common system of communications to express and to realize their very diverse values and interests. This very diversity shows that identification with a particular culture does not determine interest.

Such an understanding of culture also points out that the borders of cultures and thus of their membership are not hard or clear-cut. First, culture taken in the widest sense refers to more than just “ethnic” aspects; people’s overall cultures also may include socio-economic or class or regional aspects. Which one is most prominent depends on the context. Thus prior to the war many Serbs and Croats from the Croatian region of Lika identified themselves first as Licani; when they met each other outside of Lika, this cultural-regional tie tended to matter most. But even accepting a narrow ethnic definition of culture, clear-cut borders don’t necessarily exist. Using the analogy of spoken language, especially before the institutionalization of language policies and the modern state (but even now), languages did not so much border on each other, with clear cut lines of demarcation. Rather, they blended into each other. What we now call dialects in fact are often reflections of this shading into other “languages.” This is still often the case. Thus in northern Croatia, Kajkavski blends into Slovenian; in former frontier regions in Poland, Byelorussia and Russia, the languages blend into each other gradually; in Germany the shades of German blend into each other, ranging from Plattdeustch in the north to Schwyzerdütsch in Switzerland; and Plattdeutsch itself shades into Dutch and Frisian. In addition, related languages are often mutually intelligible; the concept of a “border” between them is artificial. Apart from such closely related languages as Norwegian and Danish, Croatian and Serbian, Dutch and Flemish, mutual comprehension exists to a great extent between Spanish and Galician and Portuguese, Russian and Byelorussian and Ukrainian, etc. And in areas of contact between two languages that are not related, there also tends to be no clear-cut border. In such regions there is often much mixing of languages and multilingualism. Indeed, the fact that many people are bi- or multi-lingual indicates how very porous and flexible are the borders of languages. In addition, languages, like cultures, undergo changes, at times very rapid; sometimes due to internal dynamics, at other times under the influence of external forces. So any attempt to draw hard or “natural” borders around linguistically defined populations of necessity involves ignoring many facts on the ground and imposing a certain vision or construction of the group and its borders. Cultural borders, especially in a heterogeneous country like the former Yugoslavia, are in many ways quite similar in nature to linguistic borders.

A communications concept of cultural groupness also helps explain the efficacy of appeals framed in terms of culture. Again, since politics is about language, such appeals will not only be expressed in the dominant system of communications; they will also seek to instrumentalize that system. The efficacy is not necessarily related to the commonality of interest or even solidarity; rather, it is due to culture's being a shared system of communication or frame of reference. Constructing a hard image of groupness and borders is facilitated by the existence of a shared communication system and the apparent naturalness of communicatory group boundaries.

Going back to the question of the relationship between culture and politics, what this definition points out is that politics takes place within the framework of a common culture. Political conflict is expressed in the “language” of culture or ethnicity. The effect of violence and images of threat to a group ethnically defined is to create the image or perception of such a group as having "real" and "hard" borders, as cultural or ethnic identity as being the most important one and as being an all or nothing choice. Thus also is constructed the perception of a single, objective, identifiable common interest: the need to respond to whatever threatens all people who share this common culture. Given the existential nature of the threat, other aspects of culture or identity by necessity become secondary. In effect, this violence constructs the ethnic group in “hard” terms, and creates solidarity in a way that did not necessarily previously exist: a solidarity of “us” which automatically is aimed against “them,” a solidarity based on a negative of fear and threats, rather than on a positive of commonality and sharing. This strategy is thus a way to impose a very specific meaning and interest on ethnicity. But what is also significant is that violence is needed to destroy other existing notions of groupness or community: territorial (eg neighborhood or village); occupational; ideational. Thus the violence in the most ethnically-mixed and tolerant regions of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina was necessary because of the strength and reality of the bonds that existed on the ground in those regions. Exactly because of the strength of these bonds, horrible levels of violence and atrocities were the only way to destroy old borders (often overlapping and porous) of culture and solidarity and to construct new ones. Rather than an attempt to mobilize people by appealing to ethnic interest or solidarity, such violence is thus a means to force a particular definition of groupness, and solidarity in terms of that groupness, onto the population. Those who disagree or dissent, or who express other kinds of identity or interest, are automatically excluded from political discourse.

The overall goal of this strategy is to redefine or reconstruct political space at two levels. First, in the short term, images of threat and violence serve to silence and marginalize those who disagree with those in power; it demobilizes people who may in other circumstances have mobilized against the regime, and effectively prevents their political participation. It at the same time seeks to reconfigure the borders of "our" political community, to redefine them based on a "hard" notion of culture or ethnicity (either us or them), again based on fear, and to delegitimize other notions of political community. At another level, and with a longer-term view, the actual policies of violence and "ethnic cleansing" are meant to alter the existing demographic facts on the ground in order to turn these new notions of group borders into a territorial reality. Previously-existing communities or bonds which deny the reality or hardness of the newly constructed, culturally defined political community (for example ethnically-mixed families, homes, neighborhoods, regions, political parties) are in particular targeted for destruction. Only violence and atrocities are sufficient to destroy these realities, and to make "real" the new hard borders of the ethnic group. The goal of this strategy of restructuring was to prevent or delay fundamental shifts in the structure of power within the domestic arena, shifts which reflected trends and pressures from within society as well as from the international environment, and which threatened core interests of elites who benefited from the status quo. This delay, and the restructuring of political space itself, had the effect of allowing these elites to reposition themselves for changes being pushed from outside and below.

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