The shadow of heroes

Former combatants in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina

Bibliographic Data

ID4389075
AuthorsXavier Bougarel (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume58
Issue189
Pages479-490
Publication date2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Social Science Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8701 • E-ISSN: 1468-2451
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-2451.2007.00646.x
OpenAlexW1719461450
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited9

The combatant population (former combatants, disabled ex-servicemen, and the families of fallen soldiers) has a key position in post-war Bosnian society, both numerically and symbolically. During the war, the three existing armies set up new systems to care for combatants and their families and to redeploy military models inherited from the Communist period. The emergence of the combatant population as a specific social group accelerated in the first years of the postwar period and can be explained by a combination of its experience of violence, its legal and symbolic status, and its integration into various association networks. At the end of the 1990s the decline in the material well-being of the combatant population and its gradual loss of prestige led to a serious identity crisis. In 2001-2002, following the electoral victory of the Social Democratic Party in the Croat-Bosniak Federation, the associations of former combatants supported the vague secessionist intentions of the Croatian Democratic Community and strongly opposed reform of the military pension system. But former combatants also participate more informally in the evolution of Bosnian society and can even play an important role in inter-community mediation

Bosnian · Combatant · Communism · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Shadow (psychology) · Social Democratic Party · Sociology · Victory · Balkan and Eastern European Studies · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Demography · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology

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