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Stories of “Success”: Narrative, Expertise, and Claims to Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2015

Briony Jones*
Affiliation:
swisspeace University of BaselBriony.jones@swisspeace.ch

Abstract

This paper explores the possibilities provided by narrative interviewing for critically assessing claims of success regarding reconciliation policies in Brčko District, Bosnia-Herzegovina. More specifically, the paper argues that such claims of success are based on claims to expertise. Certain understandings of the harm, i.e., the inter-ethnic violence committed during the 1992–1995 war, and of the policies designed to address it, i.e., reconciliation policies based on a logic of multi-ethnic living, gain credence based on the supposed expertise of particular actors. However, knowledge of harm and of the impact of policies designed to address it is produced through the subjectivity of different actors’ positionalities, and therefore assumptions about the figure of “the expert” need to be unsettled. This paper explores the possibilities offered by narrative interviewing and analysis for bringing to the fore the complicated ways in which expertise is produced in certain places at certain times.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2015 

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References

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8 The author would like to thank the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council for funding this fieldwork.

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41 The 1992–1995 Bosnian war was part of the breakdown of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) and was connected to violence taking place elsewhere in the Balkans at this time.

42 These are the three main ethno-national groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

43 On fertile land, close to international borders, and in between territory controlled by different armed forces which were later to become the Federation of Muslim and Croats and the Serb Republic in a post-war consociational political arrangement.

44 Such high levels of funding were not maintained over time.

45 Insights presented in this paper are also informed by a short return trip to Brčko District in 2011.

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47 Schema adapted from Jovchelovitch and Bauer, “Narrative Interviewing.”

48 The presence and role of the interpreter was extremely important, and this is often overlooked by researchers working in other languages. Indeed, it certainly does not often feature in presented analyses. The author has written about this elsewhere in Ficklin, Lisa and Jones, Briony, “Interpreting Translation Practices in the Field,” Graduate Journal of Social Science 6 (2009): 108130.Google Scholar

49 Interview 080508.

50 Bosnia and Herzegovina.

51 Paddy Ashdown cited in International Crisis Group, Bosnia’s Brčko: Getting In, Getting On and Getting Out, International Crisis Group, Balkans Report No 144 (Sarajevo, Brussels: ICG, 2003), 1.

52 This is the civilian office responsible for overseeing the transition in Bosnia-Herzegovina and ensuring that the reforms laid out in the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 are implemented.

53 Brčko District Supervisor Raffi Gregorian, 8 March 2009, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/presssp/default.asp?content_id=43174.

54 Field diary extract 12 July 2007.

55 Interview 150308.

56 Interview 040607.

57 Interviews 290408b, 110707c, 190707a, 160408, 200308.

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61 The High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina has so-called “Bonn Powers” (named after the location of the agreement signing) which allow him/her (it has always been a man in fact) to pass laws and remove democratically elected officials if such measures are considered necessary for the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords.

62 The author has published elsewhere on this case study in more detail: Briony Jones “Exploring the Politics of Reconciliation through Education Reform: The Case of Brčko District, Bosnia-Herzegovina,” The International Journal of Transitional Justice 6 (2012): 126–48.

63 The author has published elsewhere on this case study in more detail: Briony Jones “Who Does this District Belong to? Contesting, Negotiating and Practicing Citizenship in a Mjesna Zajednica in Brčko District,” Transitions 51 (2011): 171–91.

64 Interviews 110408, 150308, 13032008, 250707.

65 Interview 080508.

66 Interviews 120707, 290408b, 290408c, 100308, 040607.

67 Informal Interview 100308.

68 Brčko District Government (2003) Law on Mjesne Zajednice, Article 9.

69 Interview 100308a.

70 Interview 100308a.

71 Field notes 180707.