Peacebuilding at the Local Level: Refugee Return to Prijedor'

During the 1992-95 war, Prijedor was synonymous with mass killing, ethnic cleansing and detention camps. A decade after the end of the war, international agencies consider this town to be an example of successful foreign intervention. Thousands of Muslim displaced persons (DPs) returned to their pre-war homes, mosques have been rebuilt, and hard-line Serb nationalists have lost much influence. How could Prijedor turn from a hopeless case of ethnic violence to an example of successful intervention? This essay argues that Prijedor's (relative) success is due more to the determination of Muslim DPs than to the international peacebuilding strategy. The initial post-Dayton international intervention exacerbated the problem of internal displacement, raised ethnic tensions and left Prijedor in the hands of the same indicted war criminals responsible for the war. Against the advice of international agencies, which feared a backlash among the Bosnian Serbs, in 1998 Muslim DPs began returning home. Eventually, large-scale return improved ethnic relations and helped marginalize Bosnian Serb extremists. The essay concludes by highlighting the lessons from Prijedor, and identifies the domestic and international contribution to Prijedor's post-settlement success.

Contact, trust and social capital in Northern Ireland: a qualitative study of three mixed communities

In a recent paper, Robert Putnam (2007) challenges the contact hypothesis by arguing that ethnic diversity causes people to ‘hunker down’ and essentially withdraw themselves from society. Drawing on
qualitative data collected from three mixed communities in Northern Ireland, this paper explores the extent and quality of contact experienced by Protestants and Catholics in their everyday lives. Themes emerging from our data are generally consistent with the contact hypothesis. There is also some support for Putnam’s theory that mixed environments can induce ‘hunkering down’ and that inter-group trust may be compromised. However, our data challenge Putnam’s argument that these responses are a consequence of ‘anomie’ or ‘social malaise’. Rather, we find that withdrawal from social activity in the neighbourhoods we observed was a calculated response at times of threat, often aimed at protecting existent positive inter-ethnic relations.

Introduction

The scholarly interest in norm implementation in the area of minority rights protection emerged during the period of the European accession of post-communist societies, which were characterised by persistent cleavage along ethnic lines. These studies have analysed democratic transition of ethnically segmented societies and developed into a broad field that focuses its attention on inter-ethnic relations, the role of history, interstate cooperation and the impact of international organisations on post-communist states' treatment of domestic minorities. All these are usually conducted from a vantage point of the European conditionality research. In our introduction to the special issue we sketch a number of reasons why it is encouraging and indeed, desirable to move beyond the perusal of conditionality into the domain of implementation research.

Ethnic Nationalism and Adaptation in Cyprus

Both ethnic communities in Cyprus have maintained strong political and cultural ties with Greece and Turkey, respectively, and at some point of their twentieth century history, each has aspired to become part of either the former or the latter. Yet the way this relationship has been imagined has differed across time, space, and class. Both communities have adapted their identities to prevailing ideological waves as well as political opportunities, domestic alliances, and interests. The article evaluates different responses to ethnic nationalism, highlighting important intra-ethnic differentiations within each Cypriot community usually expressed in the positions of political parties, intellectuals, and the press. While the current literature identifies two major poles of identity in the island, "motherland nationalism" and "Cypriotism," the article suggests that the major focus of identity of Cypriots is identification with their respective ethnic communities in the form of Greek Cypriotism or Turkish Cypriotism. In fact, contentious politics in Cyprus from the ENOSIS/TAKSIM struggle to the April 2004 referendum demonstrate the interplay of external constraints and collective self-identification processes leading to the formation of these identities. The article concludes by identifying the implications of identity shifts for deeply divided societies and conflict resolution in general.

Community Relations in Northern Ireland: a shift in Attitudes?

The paper presents an analysis of Northern Ireland Social Attitudes data available at the time of writing. Its significance lay in emerging disparities in the responses, over time, of Protestants and Catholics to key social issues such as integrated education. The data, made public just one year after the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, generated intense media interest. Findings were reported in 400 outlets worldwide (UU media monitoring). Hughes was also interviewed for local and national news programmes (including BBC World Service). The data informed a decision by Government to undertake a major review of community relations policy, and Hughes was invited to advise the Head of the Northern Ireland review team. She was also invited to Chair the Community Relations Panel of the ESRC Devolution

Racism and young girls' peer group relations: the experiences of South Asian girls

This article draws upon data from an indepth ethnographic study of five- and six-year-old children in an English multi-ethnic, inner city primary school. It focuses on the significance of ‘race’ within young girls’ peer group relations and the ways in which the social dynamics that underlie those relations provide the context for understanding the particular nature and form that racism takes among the girls. This is done through a focus on the experiences of South Asian girls within the group. Within this, the article has two main aims. First, it aims to contribute to the literature within the sociology of education by extending the existing research focus on racism within teacher/pupil interactions to include an understanding of racism as it manifests itself among the children’s peer-group relations. Second, in adapting and applying Pierre Boudieu’s concepts of capital and field, the article also offers a contribution to the literature within the sociology of ‘race’ and ethnicity by suggesting one potentially fruitful way in which racism can be understood within specific social contexts.

Racism, masculine peer-group relations and the schooling of African/Caribbean infant boys

The past decade has witnessed the publication of a growing number of important ethnographic studies investigating the schooling experiences of Black students. Their focus has largely been upon student-teacher relations during the students' last few years of compulsory schooling. What they have highlighted is the complexity of racism and the varied nature of Black students' experiences of schooling. Drawing upon data from a year-long ethnographic study of an inner-city, multi-ethnic primary school, this paper aims to compliment these studies in two ways. Firstly the paper will broaden the focus to examine how student peer-group relations play an integral role, within the context of student-teacher relations, in shaping many Black students' schooling experiences. By focussing on African/Caribbean infant boys, it will be shown how student-teacher relations on the one hand, and peer-group relations on the other, form a continuous feed-back loop; the products of each tending to exacerbate and inflate the other. Secondly, by concentrating on infant children, the paper will assess the extent to which these resultant processes and practices are also evident for Black pupils at the beginning of their school careers - at the ages of five and six.