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Two Faces of Social Justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina PULS DEMOKRATIJE – ZAJEDNICA NEISTOMIŠLJENIKA www.pulsdemokratije.net [email protected] Editor in Chief: Svjetlana Nedimović Deputy Editor in Chief: Mirjana Evtov Reviser: Mirjana Evtov Special thanks to Andy Aitchison Design and DTP: Ideologija, Sarajevo Photos: Branimir Prijak Printed by: Blicdruk, Sarajevo Published by: Fond otvoreno društvo BiH Fondacija Mirovna akademija Sarajevo, 2014. THIS VOLUME OF PULS DEMOKRATIJE IS A JOINT PROJECT OF THE OPEN SOCIETY FUND BIH AND FONDACIJA MIROVNA AKADEMIJA PREFACE 05 Svjetlana Nedimović THINKING AND INVENTING THE IMPOSSIBLE 07 Anela Hakalović 67 WE 09 Dijala Hasanbegović 70 11 PLACES OF RESISTANCE 71 A TRADITION BETRAYED: 13 A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONS IN BIH Belma Buljubašić 81 FAIRER OUTCOMES IN AN UNFAIR SYSTEM: THE RIGHT TO DIGNIFIED EMPLOYMENT 24 Ena Bavčić 92 POVERTY – THE DEATH OF RESISTANCE 35 Luka Čuljak 102 39 THE FORGOTTEN ON THE FRINGES OF THE SYSTEM: INVISIBLE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY 42 Selma Zulić NEOLIBERALISATION OF FEMINIST ACTIVISM 51 Safija Zahirović LULLABY FOR O. 60 Dijala Hasanbegović YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT: AN ATTITUDE ISSUE OR A RESEARCHER’S ISSUE? 62 Srđan Žagovec 2 67 ON SOCIAL JUSTICE WITH NO ILLUSIONS RECESS 70 Dijala Hasanbegović REVEALING REALITY IN FRAGMENTS: 71 FORMS OF INJUSTICE PORTRAYED IN POST-WAR BOSNIAN-HERZEGOVINIAN FILMS Matija Bošnjak THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IN DUAL TRANSITION: THE CASE OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 81 Alina Trkulja TRANSFORMING THE IMAGINARY: SOCIAL JUSTICE AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 92 Boriša Mraović POTENTIAL FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN BIH: AN ISLAND OR AN ARCHIPELAGO? 102 Nedim Kulenović 3 4 SVJETLANA NEDIMOVIĆ LIVING THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, SPRING 2014 On Thursday 30 January 2014 we, the editors and authors of the texts before you, gathered at a public debate on social justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was also the book launch, meant to crown our nearly year-long reading and writing efforts to return the concept and issue of social justice into our public discussions. In the sombre light of the local art cinema, which was surprisingly full, our struggle to think and talk social justice continued. The discussion laboured to find its way through the labyrinth of a language no longer alive and a language of the social yet to be born. When we parted that night, the feeling of achievement, already weak, was further weakened as rather than having dealt a blow to the dominant ethnopolitical discourse of BiH, we had condemned ourselves to a deserted island. Worse still, we did not know what one could do with the thoughts and cognitions which ripened in us over that year of reading, writing and thinking in common. Little did we know, for only about six days later, we met again on the streets of Sarajevo. We responded to the social uprising in Tuzla, perhaps the last industrial city of BiH, a synonym for the working class even in former Yugoslavia. Now, two months later, we can say that everything changed in that week. Our social reality, above all, changed most dramatically in response to the challenge which had not come through theoretical engagement but with stones and fires and language of swear words combined with slogans. As good a way as any to be reminded of the factor in events so e asily overlooked by social sciences and policy-makers – the moment which is born out of itself. The dilemmas which we had grappled with in these texts – those we met again, on the streets and in the plena, the emerging spaces of direct democracy. Is resistance possible? Can we move beyond liberal notions of justice and past-reckoning? How to build solidarity in a fragmented society ridden with distrust? Does the social exist in BiH or it is to be invented? How to talk justice across the barriers of institutional arrangements? How to open new spaces of democracy? And, above all, even if all is said and agreed – whose voices remain on the margins, for some always do? We have not yet found the answers. Perhaps all we know is that neither answers nor interpretations should be rushed. The meaning of all that has been happening over these weeks remains to be imagined as much as discovered. Its significance however is already felt insofar as the first true challenge to the ethnopolitical grip over the social reality in BiH has not come from the economic prosperity framework, which for long has been the only contender, much favoured by the international actors. It has come from the social problematique which is now reclaiming its place in both the political and economic sphere. 5 6 ANELA HAKALOVIĆ THINKING AND INVENTING THE IMPOSSIBLE To talk and write about the social justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 21st century’s second decade may appear as a superfluous attempt to articulate an irresolvable aporia. Judging by the obvious, the combination of notions of “social” and “justice” is virtually unknown among local intellectuals, activists and the social scene. The idea of social justice is patently marginal even to those who like to think of themselves as leftists, while others tend to see “social justice” mainly as the rubbish from the previous regime – something old-fashioned, outdated, and something that certainly cannot be applied to today’s social context. Have we really consented to become victims of the neoliberal capitalist doctrine in which socially just is only that which is commercially viable and justified, while the society itself is identified with the market? Is it instead possible that we have simply failed to cope with an unnameable system? The absolute domination of the currently so very popular identity politics (or, in our case, the ethno-national narratives used to conceal the overall restoration of capitalism by maintaining the social tensions) pushes aside everything that has to do with our actual daily existence, including the questions of whether we have jobs and employment contracts, or access to workers’ rights, the questions of who employs us and how much we earn, and whether we can afford to pay the bills, etc. On the other hand, the complete absence of any kind of curiosity, in this case about our social existence, seems to be a symptomatic feature of BiH society. The few attempts at protesting against social injustice were eventually forced to justify themselves by their ethnic impartiality, and had to keep pointing out their ethnic diversity, or even their non-political character. This was the case with probably the biggest organized protests in post-war BiH, the 2013 protests nicknamed Babylution because it was the FBiH’s babies who, deprived of their personal identification numbers (JMBG) could not exercise – to start with – their right to health insurance. The Babylution managed to achieve a Parliamentary decision on temporary regulation on the personal identification number, but the protests ceased before effecting any specific policy change, failing to deliver a new type of political organizing, or new types of organization. The relevant media coverage focused on the Babylution’s multi-ethnicity: “The protests united the BiH nations” was one of the most frequent headlines in newspapers, web portals or television reports. The fact that the protests actually united the potentially vulnerable was not much discussed. No one dared to talk about the fact that in this particular case the protesters were mainly members of one ethnic group or at least the residents (either voluntary or involuntary) of one of our many ethno-political spaces. No one dared to translate the newly awakened awareness of social problems into concrete political demands. It was not much different when it came to the October census. The so called civic forces, those of them who exercise shy leftism as a hobby and those embedded in the ethnic matrix alike, wholeheartedly supported the census questions forced upon us: only the questions on ethnic / national origin, language and religion were considered politically relevant. All the other questions (by the way blissfully inarticulate and shamefully worded too), like those on employment and income, that is to say the questions of social existence, were regarded as second-rate ones, if mentioned at all. Thus both the JMBG protests and the last census revealed that the BiH society is generally not aware of social justice being a political issue. On the other hand, we actually have no language in which to articulate the obvious problem of social injustice. The existing social reality has doubly suppressed the linguistic idiom which implies the class, class equality and working-class justice. This idiom was first antiquated by being associated with the former system whose legitimacy eroded, or was destroyed, or both. On the other hand, this idiom has been totally depoliticized. The only political questions in BiH are the ones directly related to ethnicity. The questions about whether and how we work, whether and how we join unions, how we manage to survive at all – these questions are considered to be personal, at best – family questions. If it was needed to emphasize that a protest which was primarily social (such 7 as the Babylution was) had united national and ethnic groups in BiH (as if unification of nations and ethnicities were more significant and more political than a question of a personal identification number), and if the census question on labor force was treated as a second-rate political issue – then we are actually dealing with a lack of social cohesion and a lack self-awareness of the community. In light of the two events of 2013 mentioned, social justice in BiH appears as yet another curious phrase of the second decade of the 21st century, a linguistic construct with no equivalent in reality; which also happens to answer the question asked at the beginning: Yes, we are both victims and supporters of the neo-liberal capitalist ideology in which what is just equals what is cost-effective.

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