Bosnian Identity – Destruction of Paradigm of Multilaterality?

Abstract

The concept of identity contains two characteristics: consistency and continuity in time. Although the term is thus used in psychology, its two characteristics are commonly used in analysis and research of identity. If we start from these postulates, we notice that the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society has all the characteristics of a multilateral society since the earliest times, while from 1992 until now the processes of internal and external destruction of this kind of society are taking place. Members of all the peoples who inhabited Bosnia from the earliest times have cultivated their own culture with existing culture they encountered. Thus, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society’s multilateralism, whose characteristics multiethnicity, multireligiousness and multiculturalism, has built for centuries. All internal and external attacks on the continuity of the Bosnian society did not, however, destroy the foundations of its multilateralism. Identity mosaic of this kind of society consists of Illyrian, Slavic, Celtic, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and all the newer elements that have influenced and influence its structuring. The positive effects of the civilizational heritage as one of the most important segments of Bosnian identity are significantly shaken in the early 1990s and are continually disrupting today.