The Crisis of Individual and Collective Identity as a Problem of the Social Security in Multi-Ethnic States - the Particular View on Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The crisis of identity is one of the crucial issues that directly influencing both, individual and collective security. That crisis situates into a centrum of social and political security in every multi-ethnic state, therefore in Bosnia and Herzegovina too. Depending on the conditions such as overall level of development in given society, mostly viewed from the perspective of human rights protection, the crisis is bigger or smaller, dispensed or focused, deeper of benign, so the crisis is "incident" or condition. None of the societies is entirely immune from possible jeopardizing of the identity of individuals or groups. Such a happening can be illustrated in situation when various xenophobia are present, or simply when differences are not understood and accepted. Still, when society is highly developed, or on the respectable level of development, these negative processes could be effectively and efficiently controlled, therefore will not evolve into factors that cause social and political insecurity. Thus, one should not speak about the crisis of identity in such a society. However, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the problem of understanding the identity and relations towards identity is one of the major security risks that in different levels and in multi-meaningful ways producing, sustaining and often deepening the state of insecurity among citizens, social groups, social strata as well as within entire national collectivities (accordingly, influencing the national security in Bosnia and Herzegovina in general). In Bosnia and Herzegovina the identity has been viewed, at the high level of significance, as something singular, in oversimplified manner, and according to the system of imposition. In other words, it is about the de-personalization of individuals done by the certain number of (quasi)political elites, by the certain number of religious leaders at all levels, as well as by the number of intellectuals who contributes to the processes which dehumanize politics by attacking, among other things, the identity of individuals and groups, and by doing so, committing the ideological and political violence to the group "other", but to their "own" group as well. The violence has been committed to the history, language, tradition, culture, religion, science, but also to the set of human rights, individual and collective, exactly on the principles of singularizing the identities. That kind of condition resulting in individual and group resistance, which homogenizing based on different foundations, therefore ending in the crisis per se, but can be viewed as a latent intro in wider conflicts that can exaggerate security situation in country, as well as in the region.