Maya Shatzmiller Islam and Bosnia

Annotation

Islam and Bosnia re-examines the conflict of the 1990s from the perspectives of international relations, conflict resolution, and history as well as psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Rejecting the primordialist, or "ancient hatreds," interpretation as the root of the conflict, the authors detail how a complex cultural transformation led to the erosion of what had been the common inclusionist base of a multi-ethnic state and brought about a new exclusionist nationalism. By pulling together the individual elements of culture, society, and foreign policy and analysing their interaction, Islam and Bosnia demonstrates how the secular romantic nationalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, centred on history, language, and landscape, was overthrown in favour of one that highlighted religion, race, and territory.