SIZIFOVSKA PRIČA: PATOLOGIJA ETNIČKOG NACIONALIZMA I PEDAGOGIJA KOVANJA HUMANIH DEMOKRATIJA NA BALKANU
A SISYPHEAN TALE: THE PATHOLOGY OF ETHNIC NATIONALISM AND THE PEDAGOGY OF FORGING HUMANE DEMOCRACIES IN THE BALKANS

Summary/Abstract: This article uses the seemingly endless difficulties that the international community (IC) faces as it engages in country-building in the post-conflict environment of the Balkans, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as the starting point for a new theoretical “pragmatism” that reinvigorates our ongoing attempts to transform ourselves and our turbulent world. Although political and economic problems on the institutional level continue to plague BiH, theorists and practitioners alike have paid insufficient attention to explaining the importance of issues that arise on the personal and interpersonal levels. In this article, the author contends that there is a connection between these fundamental levels and democracy-building. The connection is shown by how the personal and group identities of ethnicity and nationalism can lead to the pathology of ethnic nationalism and how this has dire consequences for democratization in BiH. Yet pedagogy for forging humane democracies can be created on the institutional level, as well as on the personal and interpersonal levels. The latter would include the transformation of identities by means of intercultural education and the use of imagination in order to broaden peoples’ understandings of “the other.” It is hoped that such pedagogy would help to “shield” democratization efforts in BiH from the deleterious effects of ethnic nationalism.

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