Divergent Stories, Convergent Attitudes : Study on the Presence of History, History Textbooks and the Thinking of Youth in post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The task of the research was binary: to determine the use of history in the post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina from the perspective of young people, and to define the historical thinking of youth among Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Bosniacs. The task coalesced into three main analyses. The first analysis discussed the general presence of history in post-war Bosnian society. The analysis was organised around history-related phenomena: history culture, historical consciousness and history politics. Three separate 8th-grade (the 8th grade is the last year of obligatory schooling) history textbooks used by the three Bosnian national communities were the subject of the second analysis, which focused on the representations of three socio-historical concepts central in post-war Bosnian society: war, peace and nation. The third analysis of the historical thinking of the youth was based on the international Youth and History survey which I conducted among 8th-grade pupils in Bosnia in 1999-2000. The descriptive statistic analysis of the answers of 907 pupils concentrated on the representations of the same three concepts as in the textbooks analysis. The answers of the Bosnian national groups were compared to each other and to other European country samples. The description of the presence of history illustrated the division of history culture into three separate – and even opposing – cultures in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. History textbooks further demonstrated how presentations of the past among the three communities create hostile images of the country’s other national groups. They construct three different interpretations of the past within a society of four million people often equating the past with the present. Finally, the Youth and History survey analysis showed that in most questions, the national groups differed only marginally in their thinking. In the European comparison, Bosnians formed a single group and demonstrated great belief in future peace and did not consider wars important factors of change in history.