Synthetic report - EURAC

society. 25 In Croatia and Serbia ethno-mobilization presupposes an initiative and
subsequent commitment of the political leader (-ship) steadily assuming control
over segments of society. In BiH, the situation is similar. The difference consists in
the fact that the political leadership was acting from the outside (Serbia and
Croatia). This concept is close to the instrumentalist model presented in the
introduction. The case of Kosovo is quite different, as the definition does not stress
any special role of political leadership. Stressing the “vital collective interests” of
an ethnic group, it gets close to the primordial model.
2.7. Summary
From this point a summarizing definition of ethno-mobilization is possible as
follows:
Ethno-mobilization is a process of (emotional, cultural and political)
homogenization of societies according to their ethnic identity. The intensity
depends on the promotion of a strong and influential political leader or leading
elite (political parties), religious leaders and intellectuals, and is promoted by the
media and religious communities, pointing to more recent or older collective
traumatic experiences. This leads to the isolation of ethnic groups from one
another, as members of other ethnic group(s) are perceived as enemies.
The most intensive stage of ethnic mobilization results in ethnic conflict
and in the worst case the violent unloading of tensions and attempts at the
extermination/genocide of the enemy group, or at least the backing of actions
taken by the “defence forces” to do so.
As this is an all embracing definition it is clear that not all features must be
fulfilled to set off the avalanche of ethnic mobilization; sometimes it is enough to
have one ethnic group start national homogenization, invoking an automatic
collective process in other ethnic groups.
In order to make this definition more operational, it is helpful to resort to
the concept of cognitive frames. Doing so, one may distinguish two stages of ethnomobilization
in the former Yugoslavia. A shift from the normal frame to the crisis
frame, or more properly the moment, in which the crisis frame becomes dominant
can be regarded as the crucial point. Taking into account that within the crisis
frame the peoples of Yugoslavia think about each other in terms of collective
responsibility for past harms and atrocities, one may argue that a violent ethnic
conflict became unavoidable as the crisis frame started to dominate. A shift from
the normal frame to the crisis frame is thus to be regarded as a “point of noreturn”,
at which the ethnic mobilization inevitably leads to violence. The
establishment of this point of no-return is one of the major goals of this survey.
25 The “top-down” direction in the process of dissolution of Yugoslavia in general is observed
by Allcock, 418. This author seems to link it to the authoritarian rule forcing everything
into the pattern of state-sponsored self-management and, doing so, impeding a creation
of a civil society. See Allcock, 420.
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