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Young adults’ perspective of social reconstruction in three post-war communities in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

War leaves behind difficult social legacy of long-term consequences at individual, interpersonal, communal and societal level. There is ample of evidence showing that social recovery of post-war communities is much more demanding process than it is material repair and rebuilding. When the violence happened within communities that once had lived peacefully and harmoniously, a road to social recovery and more amicable intergroup relations becomes even more problematic. Nevertheless, many scholars believe that intergroup reconciliation is possible and assume various motivational, cognitive, behavioral and identity changes in both victimized and perpetrator groups that are necessary in order to achieve cooperative relations, restore mutual trust and accomplish intergroup reconciliation. However, by following Tajfel’s notion on interpersonal vs. intergroup behavioral continuum we believe that the processes of reconciliation have more intra- and interpersonal than intergroup qualities. Instead we propose social reconstruction to be a more appropriate term that describes more accurately the processes of rapprochement among formerly belligerent groups. We define it as a process within and around a community which brings its damaged social functioning to a normal level of interpersonal and group relations and renews the social fabric of the affected community. In order to disentangle this complex process we analyzed perceived collective victimhood, ethnic identification and social reconstruction tendencies in three samples of young people between 18 and 34 years old, Croats and Serbs (N=440) in three settings – Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Knin and Vukovar (Croatia), that experienced 1991-1995 wars in different ways, and with different personal and community consequences. Results showed that while youth ethnic identification was strong their readiness for social reconstruction was fairly modest. The analyses revealed that readiness for different forms of social reconstruction differed depending on the participants’ group membership, their ethnic identity and perceived collective victimhood. We discuss implications of war experiences and different social contexts for social reconstruction processes and community recovery.

social reconstruction, war, post-war community, ethnic identity, collective victimhood

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