TRANSFORMING ETHNIC NATIONALISM

-         The politics of ethno-nationalistic sentiments among the elite in Kosovo

June 2002

For the partial fulfilment of the Cand. Polit. degree at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

 

Typeset in 12 pt Pallantino Linotype

24 pt line spacing

2 cm margins

 

Table of Contents:

Introduction.. 5
1. States, Nations and Nationalism... 8
- When is a nation?. 10
- Ethnicity and Ethnic Nationalism... 17
- Multi-Culturalism and Civic Nationalism... 24
- International Intervention and the problem of interim governments. 31
2. Methodology and focus of enquiry.. 36
- Participant Observation.. 37
- Research in Conflict Societies. 39
- Events Analysis. 40
3. Kosovo between Myth and Reality.. 45
- Kosovo in the periphery of empires. 46
- Albanian Ethnic Identity in Kosovo.. 58
- On the Boundaries of the Albanian Ethnic Category.. 68
- What Now?. 79
4. Cultural Diversification and High Culture. 83
- High Culture and Vertical Integration.. 85
- The New High Culture. 89
- The Display of High Culture. 94
5. The Intellectual elite – Maintaining the Grand Story.. 98
- Institutional Production of Knowledge. 99
- The Grand Story Presentation.. 108
6. The Political Elite – Enacting Grand Story Representation.. 111
- Leadership in political parties – the enactment of politics. 112
- Public ceremonies. 115
- The political usage of ethno-nationalistic symbols and myths. 127
- Rhetoric and Language Games. 144
- Elections and Democratisation.. 146
7. The International elite – The Culture of Foreign Masters and Experts.. 149
- Types of international organisations. 149
- Being an ‘international' 152
- ‘Hierarchalisation' of Nations. 158
- The diplomatic elite. 160
- Usage of symbols. 162
- Perceptions of ‘locals' 163
- The International Elite and the new High Culture. 165
8. The Development of Territorial Identity and Civic Nationalism... 167
- Development of territorial identity.. 168
- The potential of the ‘Kosovar' identity.. 171
- Transforming Ethnic Nationalism... 178
Conclusion.. 179
Bibliography.. 182
Annex 1. 187

Foreword

The efforts of the international community in Kosovo are huge. There is, however, almost no scientific research undertaken by international professional academics looking at the effect of this engagement on culture and society. This is for me disappointing, as I believe the social sciences seldom have bigger potential impact on decision-making, as well as to provide international staff operating in the field, approximately 50.000 of them as of 2001, analysis and understanding of the complex setting in the context of international intervention, institution building, democratisation, implementation of self-government, and the difficult issues of reconciliation. I use the opportunity therefore, to urge international academic milieus to use Kosovo as a laboratory for studies on nationalism, nation-state, ethnicity and international intervention. This study is merely a beginning in this respect, and I hope to encourage other studies to continue the investigation.

 

The aim of this thesis is to provide an analysis of how the elite in Kosovo maintain and transform ethno-nationalistic sentiments in a society in transition not only from a socialist one-party political system to democracy, but also from conflict to reconciliation. The methods used in this thesis are based upon the scientific discipline of modern Social Anthropology, where ethnographic description through the method of participant observation is fundamental. The field research carried out in order to collect and create data [1] for the thesis took place mainly in Pristina from September to December 2000, and April to December 2001.

 

Because of its perspective and descriptive methods, I feel it is necessary here to warn about misuse of the content of the thesis. The political culture that is here described as nationalistic is not an Albanian phenomenon, but is part of a regional culture of politics found in South-East Europe and Europe in general; this analysis provides an understanding of this culture merely by using the Kosovo-Albanian elite as a case. The mobilisation of ethno-nationalistic sentiments in the region must be seen as inter-connected and in the perspective of mutual mobilisation in opposition to ‘the other' - in the case of Kosovo-Albanians, in the opposition against Serbian nationalism. Any usage of the content of this thesis to undermine this fact and to credit or discredit one particular ethnic group is against the will and intention of the author and will be met accordingly.

 

I whish to thank all those in Kosovo that met me with openness and hospitality, and in particular the National and University Library, Insitute of Albanology, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Mission (OSCE) in Kosovo, and all those colleagues and friends that made my life in Kosovo both interesting, challenging and socially meaningful. In particular, I want to thank the Selimi family for their friendship and help. I also want to thank my mentor Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen who has guided me through the process and who has been an inspiring and enthusiastic adviser in this project.

 

 

Introduction

This thesis is an attempt to analysis how the elite in Kosovo maintain and transform ethno-nationalistic sentiments in a society in transition from conflict to democracy under UN administration.

 

The purpose of the thesis is to gain understanding of how the high culture in Kosovo maintain and transform ethno-nationalistic sentiments. It is believed that such fundamental understanding is a prerequisite for promoting policies that can counter-balance the regional ethno-nationalistic politics in South-Eastern Europe today. Kosovo is in this respect an excellent laboratory for such experiments in Social Anthropology, as it is under UN juridical and administrative control, making field work in a conflict society easier.

 

The problem of investigation is: What are the premises for a process in which the high culture in Kosovo de-emphasise ethno-nationalistic sentiments and enhance a multi-cultural society of tolerance and in respect of human rights values?

 

The analysis investigates the following hypothesises that is found to be crucial to the above problem:

1.      Albanian high culture in Kosovo is currently in a process of diversification after a period where the Albanian ethnie has been mobilised and united as a result of Serbian state oppression, violence and threats of extinction.

2.      There are changes in the civil society where a new high culture emerges partly as a response to international support and implementation of rule of law, as well as the re-establishment of Albanian trans-national communities. 

3.      This new high culture represents a group that the international elite for many reasons find easy to co-operate with, and the group is therefore developing a vital part of the new government and civil society; they provide vertical integration for ‘western' ideas and the legitimacy of the international community.

4.      The international community has a positive impact on the society as they display an example of successful multi-culturalism by being represented by most of the biggest nations of the world.

5.      Territorial identity can be promoted as to counter-balance ethno-nationalistic sentiments.

 

These hypothesises will be tested by the use of participant observation as a method and address through ethnographical descriptions and analysis.

 

The thesis will rely much on Ernest Gellners (1983,1999) theory of nationalism, and his concept of the nation-state, high culture and modern nation formation; his theories is known for applying well on the German region and adjacent areas. In particular, the study will rely on Gellner's theory regarding the role of high culture and education in maintaining national identity; this will be taken as a theoretical assumption.

 

Asafa Jalata argues that that the existing bodies of theories and literature on ethno-nationalism mainly reflects the views and interests of the colonising ethno-nations and their states at the cost of the dominated ethno-nations (Jalata 1993). There are certainly international political interests involved in Kosovo, and I am sure some will considered a study like this to pay tribute to one of them, somehow. For me, however, the ambition of this study is related to what George Marcus and Michael Fisher call “Anthropology as cultural critique” (Marcus & Fisher 1986), targeting groups of potential “conflict entrepreneurs” among political actors (Eide 1997) . I believe Social Anthropology and theories of ethnicity and nationalism can deconstruct the very basis for ethno-nationalistic politics. What is presented here is Political Anthropology, it applies anthropological methods on politics. The methods used are not normative, nor are the issues studied randomly selected.

 

The empirical basis for the investigation is ethnographical descriptions and analysis of the elite in Kosovo. This group is believed to have an institutional basis and the method of investigation focuses therefore on research institutions and the University of Pristina for data on the intellectual elite, political parties for data on the political elite and the UN administrative structure and international NGO community for data on the International elite.

 

The investigation focuses on elite culture and perceptions of ethnic versus civic identity. It does not represent any ambiguity with regards to analysing the performance of the UN administration or the Albanian elite in the process of state formation and implementation of administrative policies. It must be said that this  study has been made with very limited resources and does not represent a complete attempt at analysing vertical integration between the elite and the wider population and how political legitimacy is gained. The study was conducted for partial fulfilment of the Cand. Polit. degree at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.

 

After describing the method used for the investigation (Chapter 2), Chapter 3 seeks to place Albanian culture and identity in Kosovo in a wider historical and sociological context. Chapter 4 identifies Albanian high culture in Kosovo and the emergence of what is called New High Culture. Chapter 5, 6 and 7 consists of ethnographical descriptions and analysis of the intellectual elite (Chapter 5), the political elite (Chapter 6) and the international elite (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 discusses ethnic nationalism versus a civic nationalism based on territorial identity and make conclusions based on the hypothesises set in the introducing chapter, based on the analyses done.

1. States, Nations and Nationalism

In studies of nations and nationalism, it has been normal to refer to Ernest Renan, for the first definition of a nation; “A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Only two things, actually, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other is in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of rememberances; the other is the actually consent, the desire to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage which all hold in common” (Renan 1994 [1882]). But Renan's definition is not older than from 1882. What is common for the studies of nations before World War II, are their unanimous focus on language. Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1919 about nation as a ‘speech community' and declared that “all national struggles are language struggles, that they are waged about language. What is specifically "national" lies in language” (Mises 2000:9-21 [1919]).

 

The term ‘nationalism' hardly occurred in studies in the social sciences at all, until after the two world wars. Then, ‘nationalism' became a concept that could help explain the mobilisation and the commitment of the people that lead to the war. Kedourie (1960), whom can be said to have started the modern study of nations and nationalism in the 1960s, sees nationalism as something evil that leaders of a country can use for their own political ambitions. The people are misled and almost brainwashed by misinformation and political campaigning. This conception prevails in many studies of nationalist conflicts, such as analysis of the recent Balkan wars (see Bowman 1994, Llobera 1994).

 

It is evident that the wars of the modern era, and the 20^th century in particular, has been of a peculiar character, not seen earlier in history (Hobsbawm 1997). The possibility of these wars rests in modernism and industrialism. What is it that modernism has changed? The following are some elements of these changes:

1.      The invention of the printing press that provides one-way communication with an almost indefinite number of people

2.      Competition on a free labour and trade market

3.      The uprooting of people from their kinship community and migration to cities

4.      The creation of a trade and industrial elite and an educated middle class

5.      Secularisation of religion and the end of divine legitimisation of political power

6.      The role of the state in penetrating local knowledge structures and bring technical standardisation and cultural homogenisation

 

The elements are ordered somewhat in a chronological manner. The elements outlined above fits primarily the history of Western Europe, as communist regimes have sought to eliminate element 4 and 5 [2] . Modern studies of nations and nationalism often measure the strength of these elements and how they developed in that particular area. For example would Gellner  (1983) focus on how education was spread, by migration to cities (3) with educational institutions that fulfilled the need of the labour market (2) and the creation of a literate high culture (4). Smith (1986) on the other hand, focus more on the perception of a finite death (5) and the role of nationalism as a ‘surrogate' religion in an urban society without kinship ties (3). Anderson (1991 [1983]) focus almost unanimously on the introduction of the printing press and its consequences. While Smith almost disregards element 6, Gellner and Anderson bases much of their theory on the role of the state in the creation of homogenous culture. Lately, others have started to look more closely at the technical role of the state however. James Scott (1998) have tried to see like a state and how state planners and organisers tend to standardise local knowledge structures in order to gain administrative control. In peripheries, like Kosovo, where state control has throughout history remained weak, the state often fails to bring homogenisation and standardisation (6). States are pushing for clear-cut identities; where they fail, identities may remain fluctuating and situational (see Duijzings 2000).

 

In the following, it is necessary to take a closer look at the concept of nations, state and nationalism, and how it relates to ethnicity; ethnic versus civic nationalism. It is also necessary to look into the problem of international intervention in ethno-nationalist conflicts.

 

When is a nation?

During the 1980s and 90s there was a debate about the origin of nations; between those who saw nations as something constructed in modern times and those who understood nations as continuance of something ancient, based on the natural primordial diversity of humans. Most well known for the modernist approach has been Gellner and Anderson, while Smith is often referred to as following a primordial approach. The gap was maybe not as big as many perceived it to be. Smith's focus is on elements of nationalism that seem to be based on something far older than modernism itself, but he does not disregard the massive changes brought by modernism. When reading later studies of nations and nationalism, it seems as the two approaches are somewhat complementary and that it is possible to use both approaches to shed light on the object of investigation; so will be done here. It might be argued though, that the focus of this investigation, the elite in Kosovo, favours analysis that follows the modernist approach because of its interest in the role of the high culture.

 

Most of the theoretical discourse has focused on Western-Europe. Kosovo and its immediate political-geographical context is Eastern Europe. Miroslav Hroch have developed a theoretical concept that is somewhat better adapted to the Eastern-Europe situation than other scholars. Hroch defines a nation like this:

"Now the 'nation is not, of course, an eternal category, but was the product of a long and complicated process of historical development in Europe. For our purposes, let us define it at the outset as a large social group integrated not by one but by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, historical), and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness. Many of these ties could be mutually substituable - some playing a particularly important role in one nation-building process, and no more than a subsidiary part in others. But among them, three stand out as irreplaceable: (1) a 'memory' of some common past, treated as a 'destiny' of the group - or at least of its core constituents; (2) a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group than beyond it; (3) a conception of the equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society." (Hroch 1996:79)

It is the intellectual and political elite, or ‘intelligentsia', that present and represent the subjective reflection of the objective relationships in collective consciousness. It is the economic, political, cultural, religious, geographical and historical relationship of the citizens of the nation that is the basis for this subjective reflection.

 

The elite does however, present this relationship in certain ways, such as in a way that the group feels it has a ‘destiny'. This is part of what Smith calls ‘populism' of the intelligentsia (Smith 1986:190), as it responds to a need in a modern society, where God and the infinite of death is no longer the core of organised society. But it also reflects the need of legitimisation of power by the state; as there is hardly any objective rational arguments for why a border, for example, should be exactly like it is, and the people that live close to it on each side should be treated so differently. Therefore, the elite will use the need for religious-like explanations in the population in order to legitimise power. It must be assumed that elite do so out of interest; first, because of its economic basis indirectly or directly in the state, either they are employed by state departments, employed by institutions funded by the state [3] , or enjoy good premises for their businesses; second, because their symbolic capital of being the elite is based on the legitimate power of the state.

 

The civil society, which is a manifestation of the elite, bases itself on literacy, sciences and the purification of the national culture, what Gellner calls the mastery of ‘high culture'. In the modern society, where family associations are loose and there are few stable positions or even structures; what matters is “their incorporation and their mastery of high culture; I mean a literate codified culture which permits context-free communication. Their membership of such a community and their accept-ability in it, that is a nation” (Gellner 1983:??). The mastery of such culture and acceptability in it, becomes the most valuable possession a man has. A nation is therefore a legitimisation of state power over its territory, where its population finds pride in and has ambitions to actively participate in the civil society in order to gain more power and symbolic capital, within the framework of legitimate state power. If the elite fail to vertically integrate this pride and ambitions into the population, or at least acceptance for it, the exercise of state power will grow increasingly difficult, facing a problem of legitimacy. Therefore education becomes important. Education is the incorporation of the population into the strive for mastery of high culture and its acceptance for the fact that this competition should lead people to power and form an elite that represents the nation. As Gellner says;

the maintenance of the kind of high culture, the kind of medium in which society operates, is politically precarious and expensive. It is linked to the state as a protector and usually the financier or at the very least the quality controller of the educational process which makes people members of this kind of culture (Gellner 1995).

 

The most prosperous nation would be when the population, by its strive to mastery of high culture, produce a high culture that penetrates the state and leads it to prosperity. If there is no coherence between state and high culture, and the state seems to exercise power in a way that contradicts the high culture; it will naturally evoke deep frustration in the population, as much as it would awake satisfactory emotions when the coherence proves to be effective. The civil society will thus be the medium of communicating such sentiments. For Gellner, this is a principle that keep the state or polity coherent with the culture of the population, refined by the elite as high culture. Nationalism is simply a principle that guards this balance and seek to make “culture and polity congruent” (Gellner 1983:43). Crucial for this development is that there is a homogenous culture in the population that makes vertical integration possible. It must be possible for an elite to represent and present a refined, pure, high cultural version of the nation that the population can identify themselves with, and considers to be reflect who they are. In order to help achieve this vertical integration, the state is actively engaged in promoting standardisation and homogenisation of culture.

 

The principle of congruence between politics and culture is a result of industrialism, where borders between states became more and more defined and definite as compared to the agrarian society, were the borders were natural between civilisation and the wilderness. Gellner explain the development of nationalist doctrines by looking at the development of industrialisation. This seemed to be far more fruitful than earlier studies of nationalism, for example by Elie Kedourie, who claims the nationalist doctrine was an idea based on the philosophy of Kant brought forward by the new German middle class as an argument aiding their political cause. One of the problems with both Gellner and Kedourie has been to explain the reason why nationalism spread (Kedourie 1960). Kedourie describes nationalism as a German idea that spread to the rest of Europe because of social unrest and changes (Kedourie 1960), quite opposite to Anderson, who indicates its origin from when the legitimacy of the “divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm” declined, starting with the English revolution in 1649 (Anderson 1991:7,21 [1983]). Gellner (1983) describe it as something that is a natural part of industrialisation and that the state institutions need in its development. Smith (1986) disregards them both and claim that the nationalist doctrine is founded on common cultures that existed long time before industrialisation started, which he calls “primitive nationalism” (such as the ancient Greek city-state). The earlier colonial states of Africa also proves that nationalism can come before literacy. In fact, the African de-colonisation proves that nationalism can be the drive behind spreading literacy and industrialisation (Smith 1986). Smiths emphasise is on the nation as a framework for self-realisation. People must identify themselves with the nation in order to gain freedom and self-realisation. This can not be done in any other nation, because the nation can only realise itself in its own state, just as its population, that has a distinct primordial character, can only realise themselves within the framework of their own nation-state. Loyalty is based on a national consciousness about the distinct national character. This explains why people are ready to sacrifice even their own lives for the nation.

 

There is not much agreement about when nations emerged. When investigating Norwegian nation-building at the time of separation from the union with Denmark in 1814, Kåre Lunden (1992) argue against Gellner and Anderson, who does not have much empirical material from before the middle of the 19^th century. The Norwegian nation consciousness can be traced back to the late 18^th century [4] . On the other hand, Kelly and Kaplan (2001) says; “scholarship that projects the nation-state back to the Enlightenment has occluded imperial history” (Kelly and Kaplan 2001:419). They see the World War II and decolonisation as a beginning, rather than an end; “the era of nation-states begins in 1945, an era of formal horizontal symmetries and nations imagined as communities, dominated in fact by American power and its exigencies of ‘self-determination', ‘open doors' and multilateral trade” (Kelly and Kaplan 2001:419). They claim that the studies of nations and nationalism that become so popular has its roots in the interests for ‘New Nations' and states in the USA starting right after the World War II [5] . A central argument is that the term ‘Nation-State' does not appear in any encyclopaedias until the 1960s.

 

This shows that it is very difficult to point to a specific time in which nations became nations. The debate over nations and nationalism has evolved primarily around this question. Walker Connor (1984) has in this respect pointed out that historical events, such as those claimed to be forming a new nation, is easily dated; stages in a process is not. Most peasants in France had for example not much idea of their membership in a French nation not until the first world war. The fact is, that it is a delay, in some cases stretching into centuries, “between the appearance of national consciousness among sectors of the elite and its extension to the masses reminds us of the obvious but all-too-often ignored fact that nation-formation is a process, not an occurrence or event” (Connor 1984:158). A date when nations become nations is not very useful. We should therefore leave this debate of when nations occur, and continue focusing on the dynamics of the process and its content.

 

The discussion has revealed essential characteristics of modern nations. If these characteristics and criteria are applied on Kosovo, the conclusion would most probably be that Kosovo is a new nation, contrary to what most of the people of Kosovo claim themselves. A linguist in Pristina found the term ‘Kosovar' in a British encyclopaedia and wonders polemically in an magazine article “What is ‘Kosovar'? Who are they?” (Kelmendi 2001). The term had seldom been used inside Kosovo, but it suddenly turned out to be a useful reference for international agencies who wanted to refer to the people of Kosovo without referring to any specific ethnicity. It was actually the State Department of the USA that first used the term during the war, which seem to be a good argument for Kelly and Kaplan's theory. Still, we must make a distinction between our own definitions and concepts, and that of the respective national elite and people in which we study. For example is there no distinction between nation and ethnicity in Kosovo-Albanian public discourse. As one informant said “Kosovo is not so developed, the people do not see any difference between these two concepts yet” (ref). In the case of Kosovo, European and North-American influence is huge, and with time many ‘western' perceptions will merge into the local cultural domain.

 

Another question is whether the UN protectorate is a state. Politcally, and according to the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, it is not. It is, however, an institution that enjoys full legislative powers within a clearly defined territory, and has state-like structures. Therefore we must regard it as a state for our analytical purposes. However, to say that Kosovo is a nation-state is problematic. Not because it does not act like a nation-state, but because its population yet do not define it as one.

 

If Kosovo is not a nation-state, but in our terms, a nation with “state-like structures”; can not the activity of building the state be called ‘nation-building'? As the current employees within the UN protectorate, which could be called ‘state-builders', are foreigners working for the UN, OSCE or EU within a temporarily legislative framework, it is not necessarily a nation-state that is built. But as its goal is to build up self-governmental institutions with democratically elected politicians in assemblies with legislative power, it may very well be commonly referred to as ‘nation-building' by future historians. Clifford Geertz describes ‘nation-building' like this [6] ;

As the cultural apparatus of a traditional state – the detailed myths, the elaborate rituals, the high-wrought politesse – dissolves, as it has in the majority of the Third World states and doubtless will shortly in most of the rest, it comes to be replaced by a rather more abstract, rather more willed, and, in the formal sense of the term anyway, rather more reasoned set of notions concerning the nature and purpose of politics. Whether written down in a formal constitution, built into a new set of governmental institutions