Nationalities Papers, Vol. 34, No. 3, July 2006
Gendered Transformations of State Power: Masculinity, International Intervention, and the Bosnian Police Elissa Helms
Introduction: The Bosnian Police in an Unstable State Many Bosnians I talked to were skeptical about my plan to do research among local police in the central Bosnian town of Zenica. They told me that no one would talk to me there. “They’re too scared of foreigners,” they said, meaning especially Westerners who might be connected to the powerful international institutions that have acted as de facto protectorate to the fragmented and unstable state after the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia and the devastating 1992–1995 war. In their efforts to neutralize the police as enforcer of ethno-national separatism and to promote the new democratic values of rule of law, respect for human rights, and ethnic and gender equality, the “international community” had sacked hundreds of officers, restricted police powers, and introduced quotas for ethnic minorities and women. There was thus a sense that “foreigners” posed a threat to the masculinized coercive power of the state as embodied in the police. As it happened, the police did talk to me, though always in reference to this context of shifting relations of state and state-like power, as well as the economic and social instability that characterizes post-war BosniaHerzegovina (hereafter Bosnia). This paper addresses the particular gendered frameworks in which these narratives unfolded in my interactions with male police. I show how transformations of state power, including international intervention(s), become understood and negotiated through notions of masculinity. The imperatives of post-war state-building dominated by the “international community” are feminized in opposition to a more local (“Balkan”) past, cast as a time when the police embodied the masculinized coercive power of the state. Male police anxieties over erosions of power and respect as embodiments of what is now a fragmented and unstable state are thus channeled through performances of masculinity for an audience of fellow male police, female police, and the (female) anthropologist as unwitting representative of the “international community.” A related aim of this paper is to open up a space for the critical examination of masculinities and men as gendered beings in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A growing but still incomplete literature has offered important insights into gender regimes in the former Yugoslav space.1 These studies have concentrated overwhelmingly on public ISSN 0090-5992 print; ISSN 1465-3923 online/06/030343-19 # 2006 Association for the Study of Nationalities DOI: 10.1080/00905990600766651
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(ethno-nationalist) discourses, on Serbia and Croatia, and on women, though masculinities are increasingly being examined.2 Gender literature that does deal with Bosnia3 has focused almost exclusively on women.4 We are thus left to infer, often from impressionistic generalizations and unsubstantiated asides, what kinds of masculinities are being constructed in Bosnia. Most frequently, because these accounts tend to portray (Muslim) women as victims and/or peacemakers in opposition to malecreated nationalist politics and violence, we are invited to envision Bosnian men as the violent, patriarchal force against which Bosnian women define themselves.5 This image thus coincides with broader representations of “Balkan” men as (nothing but) violent, militaristic, nationalistic, and misogynist.6 Furthermore, the focus on wartime rape has implied a violent Serb man as warrior, war criminal, and rapist,7 but impressionistic statements about the special stigma of rape for Muslim women also rest on orientalistic assumptions that these women’s (Muslim) fathers, brothers, and husbands will reject “their now-tainted women” as part of their enforcement of patriarchal control.8 Yet, empirically based analysis of Bosnian masculinities has to date been an uncharted field, especially outside the realms of wartime violence and ethno-nationalisms and with regard to Bosniac (Muslim) dominated areas of Bosnia. This paper does not address all of these gaps but only begins to examine some of the ways in which masculinity is articulated in post-war Bosnia. I start from the point stressed in scholarship on masculinity9 that, just as there is no unitary “woman,” there are also multiple and competing masculinities, which are cross-cut by other social categories including ethnicity but also class, rural/urban affiliations, age, and so on.10 This analysis shifts the focus from war and nationalism to transformations of state institutions and power, and therefore from a post-war to a more post-socialist perspective (though effects of the war certainly do not disappear).11 Ethno-national identities and divisions, while present, were in many instances less important to the local police than gender categories, class status, rank, and relations with the state and international institutions.12 My particular presence, as a female Westerner with links to a well-known local (feminist) women’s NGO and a research focus on gender-based violence, brought out particularly gendered conceptions of local community relations, NGOs, the state, and international actors. It is important to note the degree of fragmentation that exists in both physical institutions and practices, and in discursive imaginings of the Bosnian state. It is with the aim of creating a viable, unified state that the “international community” has played a crucial role in political, social, and economic developments in Bosnia since the end of the war. While this term is often a catch-all for a variety of aid agencies, U.N. bodies, international NGOs, and private donors, it is most often used to designate the Bosniabased institutions put in place by the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 to oversee the process of post-war reconstruction. Key institutions, led by the Office of the High Representative (OHR), have made full use of their broad powers to influence, and even override, decisions and policies made by local Bosnian political structures.13 Moreover, Bosnians have had to shift their expectations towards the state, as many
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(socialist) state functions have either disappeared or been taken over by foreignfunded NGOs.14 For the police, the most significant international body was the International Police Task Force, or IPTF, which carried out police monitoring and reform until the whole U.N. Mission to which it was attached was taken over in 2003– 2004 by the European Union (EU).15 As we shall see, the IPTF, and to a lesser extent its successor, the EU Police Mission (EUPM), have wielded significant power over police operations in a variety of ways. Thus, non-state actors have produced considerable “state-like effects” for the citizens of Bosnia.16 Finally, ethnically defined political tensions and the dismal economic situation form the backdrop for much anxiety and ambivalence towards both the state and international institutions. For most residents of Bosniac-dominated areas like Zenica, both political stability—perhaps even the very existence of the state—and economic prospects depend on continued international presence. “The foreigners,” as they are frequently called, are thus tolerated, if not always appreciated. For ordinary citizens, the police and NGO activists among them, the most important issue was economic survival in the new post-socialist world of unpredictable “wild-west” capitalism, political corruption, and massive unemployment.17 Such concerns manifested themselves through particularly gendered notions of the role of the police in the post-war order.
Background and Research The research I discuss here was conducted in July and August 2004 over a period of six weeks among officers in the Zenica municipal police and the (Zenica-Doboj) cantonal Interior Ministry (Ministarstvo Unutrasˇnih Poslova, or MUP). The larger project examined police perspectives on and responses to gender-based violence four years after a group of officers and detectives had undergone a program of sensitivity training on this topic organized by the local women’s NGO, Medica Zenica. I conducted participant observation among on-duty uniformed police, dispatchers, and those assigned to administrative duties as they went about their work. I also made visits, accompanied by male and female MUP officers, to a suburban and a rural station belonging to the municipality. I interviewed past participants in the Medica training program, the detectives responsible for investigating violent crimes against women and domestic violence, station commanders, and ordinary police officers. In 1999 and 2000, as part of a research project on women’s activism,18 I had followed this training program and participated in the final strategizing workshop along with 20 Zenica police officers (18 men and two women).19 The feedback concerning the police had all been positive. They had moved quickly to better accommodate police procedure to the needs of victims and, together with those from other local institutions, had successfully lobbied for stronger laws and more comprehensive services to protect victims of violence. Medica activists even reported amazing shifts of attitude by the male officers, some of whom had progressed from sexist
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dismissals of the existence of gender-based violence to arguing with their own colleagues in support of the victims. However, time had passed since the training and I was interested in what effects could still be felt in the work of the police, both in how they dealt with cases and in broader attitudes towards gender and violence, including various constructions of masculinity. At about the same time as the Medica training, the first police academy classes with significant numbers of women in them were starting to be posted to police stations.20 The Zenica police force was now 11% female, one of the highest percentages of any municipality in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I was therefore interested in everyday relations on the job, how perceptions of policing as a male profession21 might be changing with the influx of women, and whether these changes had any influence on how the police dealt with violence against women. If anything, I imagined the increased presence of women would illuminate the workings of gender power and masculinity construction among male officers.
The Police Emasculated In the eyes of the public, the police had lost its effectiveness against the rampant forces of crime. Everyone from juvenile delinquents to politically backed organized crime rings were now seen to have virtually free reign.22 Much of this criminal activity was an extension of wartime networks, which were protected by their links to political elites. But people I spoke to also conveyed a sense that smaller-scale crimes were also rampant and that “the authorities” were not doing enough to control crime. Rather than blame the police themselves, though, much of the responsibility was placed at the feet of the international community and its emphasis on upholding the rule of law and human rights. Most people were aware that new laws now restricted police detention tactics and use of violence, and that police activities had been closely monitored by IPTF officials who, it was felt, had the power to dismiss officers they deemed were not living up to the new democratic standards. At the time of my research, the EUPM had taken over these roles, though now with more emphasis on monitoring and training than punitive measures, but the “damage” had been done. One Sarajevan, laughing in the spirit of Bosnian absurdities, told me that criminals now knew they had nothing to fear from the police: “Before [in socialist times], they would just beat the shit out of anyone they suspected, but now they don’t dare raise a hand.” When his house had been broken into the previous winter, he had looked on incredulously as the investigating police officers refused to follow the burglars’ fresh tracks in the snow, since they led into the neighbor’s yard and those neighbors had not made a complaint. A journalist in Zenica just shook his head when the subject of the police came up: “Poor guys [ jadni momci],” he said over and over. “They’re pathetic. They can’t do anything.” He lamented their ineffectiveness with the same tone and facial expressions he had used to talk about an acquaintance who, he said, silently and
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helplessly submitted to his overbearing wife’s authority. Though no one used the word, there was a clear sense that the police had become emasculated. This was all too apparent to male police themselves. They complained bitterly about their overall loss of power. Their “hands had been tied” by the IPTF and other international bodies. The comments of Elvis,23 a police detective, were typical: IPTF’s mission was basically firing thousands of competent police officers, and bringing in massive amounts of paperwork [ papirologija] that prevented us from doing anything, paralyzed our work. Before [the war] it was only practice—work, order, and discipline [rad, red, i disciplina]. Now it’s paperwork, barriers.
Much of the resentment of the international community, especially the IPTF, was tinged with racism and notions of European superiority. As a U.N. body, the IPTF had been staffed by law enforcement officials from all over the world, including places in Africa and Asia.24 Invariably, when the subject of the IPTF arose, Bosnian police expressed their indignation over having been taught to drive in the snow by an Indian “who had never even seen snow!” or taught “democracy” by “some black guy from Africa.”25 What was worse, these were the people who had the power to sack police officers with impunity; they thus had to be feared. When I asked Goran, the young commander of the suburban police station, about the international community, he complained that They’ve made things worse. The Yugoslav police force was very strong and capable, and then you have police officers from Africa coming to talk to us about democracy . . . IPTF ended up giving all the democracy to the criminals. Our hands were tied, police were afraid for their jobs, and so they turned their heads rather than try to deal with things.
“All the democracy” here seems to mean the freedom and power to act as if one is in charge—the position the police, and men in general, are supposed to be in. It is in this way that they can earn respect. Nedzˇo, a veteran officer working as dispatcher, found the essence of police work in the use of violence: each time he wanted to make this point, he repeated, “The bear doesn’t dance because he likes music but because he fears the stick!” Without this power, he insisted, no one can respect the police: “How can you arrest someone without using force? A person won’t just let you put handcuffs on him [he put out his hands to be cuffed]. This isn’t America. You have to use force.” Nedzˇo’s comments rest on a Weberian link between violence, state power, and “respect” based on fear: “Now [the police] is losing its respect. Before it had prestige; people respected us because it was the state” (emphasis added). As a self-professed “old commie” (stara komunjera), he offered a particularly romanticized version of the respected, powerful, and masculinized state; as I discuss below, he also emphasized with approval the near absence of female police during socialism and praised the few women that had been present as tough, strong, and threatening enough for police work.
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Not all male police put so much stock in violence, a reflection of the masculinities associated with different class positions projected by individual officers. Elvis, a detective who joined the force in the early 1990s, was more concerned with justice and power in society: Every police force beats; all police are repressive. That’s part of the job. But OK, it’s fine if the police have to endure insults and taunts etc. without using physical violence, but then let those people be punished! The way it is now, those people get away with it. The bigger criminals just buy off those higher up, they get off or no one ever goes after them. Everyone is scared. Judges are scared to sentence people, journalists are afraid to write, so what can I tell you?
He went on to fault the confusion over the fragmentation of the state itself, going through the various administrative levels into which Bosnia is now divided: “Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Federation, entities, municipalities, cantons, the international community—everywhere you go there’s something different.”26 His comments thus reflect dismay at the erosion of the state power and the fragmentation of authority generally. Not even the concept of “the state” could encompass these levels of power anymore; note that Elvis includes the international community in his list of levels of state power. Though they are not state institutions, the power of these international actors is clearly imagined in the same category as the state, further adding to the confusion and fragmentation of what had once seemed straightforward. Another detective told me how, as a child, he had always wanted to join the police, “you know, to be the pride of the country. [The police] were dressed nicely, they were cultured [kulturna]. But now, it’s lost its authority.” He was disappointed about this diminished status but was still happy to have a job. In fact, nearly everyone’s first answer about why they had joined the police was that this was a secure job, a state “firm” that would not go bankrupt, and would pay salaries, health care, and pensions, in contrast to the unpredictable private sector. Especially in the post-industrial stagnation of Zenica, having a steady job was felt to be a valued privilege, especially for males, whose identities as men, husbands, and fathers depend on their ability to serve as breadwinners.27 Women officers also said their main reason for joining the police had been the prospect of a steady income. But women had less reason to fear losing their jobs. Most of them had been hired since the worst period of IPTF sackings had ended and were in any case less likely to be assigned to situations where they might be accused of improper use of force. Furthermore, women had been recruited not only under the quota for women but also, in a sort of two-for-one deal, in fulfillment of ethnic minority quotas.28 Indeed, almost all of the female officers I met were not Bosniac.29 The threat of being fired by foreigners was thus more real for, and more feared by, male police officers. Because the power of these foreigners was constructed as illegitimate—they were ignorant of local history and conditions, condescending, and often seen as
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racially inferior—they were also more resented for the power they held over these Bosnian men.
Domestic Violence and “Real” Police Work Ironically, one of the few areas in which the police have been granted more power in recent years has been in the response to domestic violence, i.e. in the vast majority of cases for the benefit of women victims of male violence. Since August 2003, “violence in the family” has been elevated from misdemeanor to felony (from prekrsˇaj to krivicˇno djelo), giving the police more jurisdiction and powers in terms of entering homes and prosecuting perpetrators. The connections made among local institutions as a result of the Medica training, as well as changes in police protocol, also meant that the police had more support in their interventions. There was now a network in place through which sympathetic colleagues in the courts, centers for social work, health services, and Medica itself would work together in protecting victims and charging perpetrators. The police were thus more likely to pursue cases in the first place and were not as reliant on intimidated victims for the prosecution of perpetrators. In this realm, therefore, it was under the old law and before the improved cooperation that the police felt their “hands were tied,” as Goran put it. But, given the ways in which police activities are gendered, it becomes clear that this increase in power did not work to counteract the sense of disempowerment among the police. On the contrary, it added to this sense. While the first answers I got about police protocols in dealing with domestic and sexual violence cases treated them as important issues, informal conversation revealed somewhat different attitudes. Upon hearing me introduced as a researcher interested in police treatment of domestic violence, one detective from the unit that handles illegal drugs rolled his eyes and asked me why no one wanted to research drugs. “Drugs are a much bigger problem,” he informed me. He then went on to both belittle the issue of domestic violence and challenge what he assumed I was there to “prove” by asking me a series of near-aggressive questions about what violence in the family was. His main example, his wife making him coffee and serving it to him when he comes home from work, was clearly designed to cast domestic violence (and gender equality in general) as an insignificant, even non-existent problem pushed onto Bosnians by foreigners in the face of so many other truly urgent problems.30 I got a similar sense after spending time in the dispatcher’s room with on-duty officers, several of whom joked irreverently about domestic violence and spoke seriously about the need to “show who’s boss” in the home. “Everyone knows who pees standing up!” declared one dispatcher with a grin, poking fun at but also in some sense reinforcing an innate right of men to be in charge in the home (I discuss these joking performances below). One afternoon, a woman who had called the night before to report that her husband had violently thrown her out of the house called again with
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a new complaint against her neighbor. The dispatcher took this as a sign that the woman was not mentally stable and sent a patrol to her house to confirm that she was “sick” so that they would not have to respond “for nothing” (bez veze) to this woman’s calls again. The experiences of Elvis, who had attended Medica’s training and continued to work closely with Medica on issues of gender-based violence, further illustrate these sentiments. Elvis was one of the most sympathetic members of the Zenica police to the victims of gender-based violence and was critical of many police officers’ tolerance of violence against women. He saw domestic violence as a very important part of the work of the police but was acutely aware that he was in the minority on this. In his lament (quoted above) about the general loss of the power of the police and the increasing impunity for criminals, he concluded, “Yes, [marital] rape is in the law now, but you’re prevented on all sides from doing anything about it.” He thus saw the increased powers in prosecuting gender-based violence as being subsumed by the police’s overall loss of power and authority, as well as the failure of these new laws to really change what police officers thought about such crimes. Despite the many improvements, then, most police officers still wanted to treat these cases as “incidents,” i.e. something not serious enough to warrant prosecution or police intervention. For a time, Elvis and another male detective were assigned to work on cases of sexual and domestic violence and were even given a separate office. As this was unusual for officers of their rank, they incurred a lot of resentment from fellow police, whose discontent reflected a particularly gendered notion of police work: Back then people said, “Such big boys [toliki momci], you two are big and beefy, you should be working with criminals, catching criminals and doing real police work. Not finding some little woman [neka zˇenica] and mixing up in her problems.” For work with women it should be someone who’s small, nothing [nikakav] [he slouched over and shrunk down, a meek look on his face, holding his arms up limply to demonstrate], but we were big, corpulent.
Elvis and his colleague also engaged in community outreach programs, talking with schoolchildren about drugs, safety, and domestic violence. Again, they were ridiculed for this by their colleagues, as Elvis explained: “They called us the Teletubbies31 at the police station, like we weren’t doing police work in the true sense, you know, that’s catching criminals.” Even though, under the new laws, the perpetrators of domestic violence were now classified as having committed crimes, and were thus also “criminals,” the distinction obviously pointed to a hierarchy of crimes and their prosecution.32 But Elvis challenged the assumptions that this “real” police work might be a source of pride for the police, since those “criminals” will “just laugh at them” anyway. The police had lost respect not only because they were being confronted more and more with issues of violence against women, but also because they couldn’t even catch those “real” criminals they were chasing. In other words, this
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area of expansion into the “private” sphere on behalf of women was undercutting the sense of masculine pride that was already eroding for the police as a masculine institution and profession.
The Encroachment of Women Laments from male police officers about their loss of respect and real power were also tied to the influx in recent years of women onto the police force. Most women were concentrated in the lower ranks of on-duty officers, since they had so recently joined the force, but a few had risen to the rank of senior officer and there were two female detectives. Very few of the police women I talked to reported any opposition from their friends or family in relation to their decision to join the police: as was the case for men, it was most often seen primarily as a steady job. There was no doubt, however, according to both men and women, that police work was seen as a male occupation. Some male police officers linked women’s inclusion directly to the loss of reputation for the police, asserting that “the public” wasn’t ready for women in uniform. One officer singled out a particularly petite woman beat cop whose very tall male partner complained that he was sick of being laughed at because of her: “there’s always a commotion [belaj] as soon as she steps into a place . . . She’s not threatening to anyone.” Other officers complained about having to spend more time out of the cold or searching for a place for female officers to use the toilet while out on patrol. One dispatcher did not even count women when he looked to see who was out on patrol and could be sent on an intervention. However, female officers did not report this kind of lack of respect from the public, perhaps because their uniforms and positions gave them more (or different) authority than they were accustomed to. It was also apparent that male officers were concerned mostly with the male part of the “public,” since “criminals,” especially the violent ones, were assumed, not without reason, to be men. In explaining the damage done by female police officers, one detective explained that the public was not ready for this because “they’ve just come out of a war, they’re traumatized. There are many men who were in the army, they act in all kinds of ways. You need to have an authority for them.” Similar reasoning was offered about the decision to restrict answering the phone to the designated on-duty officer, a post held only by men, after women had come onto the force. A male officer explained that the voice on the phone “has to be serious, professional. You can’t mess around with that.” Obviously, women could not command authority, especially not from those among whom such authority counted. In contrast, several women from the community told me that they felt more secure when they saw female officers on the beat, and policewomen who had answered the phone before the change in policy had had callers tell them it was nice to hear a woman’s voice at the police.
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Nearly every male officer responded to my questions about female police the way Dzˇemo did: “Too many!” While Dzˇemo said this jokingly, he and many others went on in a serious tone to explain why this was the case. They all seemed to implicitly argue against a charge of sexism; it wasn’t a matter of prejudice against women but there were certain physical differences and circumstances beyond their control that meant it was not good to have too many women in the police force, especially not out on patrol. But it became clear both that women’s presence called into question the manliness of the job and that these speakers wanted to emphasize the physical, i.e. manly, aspects of a job that was rapidly becoming more bureaucratized. Women were needed in small numbers, they said, to frisk female suspects,33 to work with women and children victims, and to fulfill administrative duties, where many women were in fact assigned.34 Of the two women detectives, one worked with financial crimes (i.e. with paper), and the other had worked her way up to this level as a specialist in domestic violence and sexual crimes (i.e. “women’s” issues), though she now also worked on other violent crimes. When the question was about women on the force in general, officers talked about police work as a series of encounters with violent criminals who needed to be intimidated and subdued with brute force. Women, and especially the women who had been admitted recently, were obviously not up to this role, in their eyes. Both older and younger policemen waxed nostalgic about the socialist system when there were more rigorous physical requirements for the police. The very few women on the force then had therefore been big and muscular. “That’s OK,” said one male uniformed officer, “but what we have now?! Just imagine someone coming up against her. You could just kick her away with your foot.” With a disgusted, disdainful look on his face, he demonstrated by kicking out his foot. Again, although women officers I spoke with reported feeling more confident and respected (even more “crude” and masculine) when they were in uniform, the idea that women’s uniform and their connection to state authority would be enough to command respect did not convince most male officers.35 As one of them put it, “Ugh, that doesn’t matter at all. Look at how little and fragile these women are.” Another said, “If a criminal sees her like that, he will know he has nothing to fear and won’t respect her at all.” Muscle-bound masculinity was what was needed for the job, not just the authority of the state. This was all the more important now that state authority seemed to be declining. As the nostalgic comments about “real,” muscular policewomen from the past indicate, their problem was also with the selection process. This was again linked to resentment toward the international community as well as toward the nationalist parties that control many decisions at the police and in local and state-level politics. Admission to the police academy and later to the force had come to be governed more by concerns about ethnic and gender quotas than about the physical fitness of the officers. Physical criteria had thus been lowered for both men and women, and financial constraints meant few opportunities for officers to stay in shape, practice marksmanship, or even have the proper gear with which to do the physically
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demanding parts of the job. Yet men were not singled out as a group the way women were in complaints about the lack of preparedness of the police since the war. At the same time, however, at least when female police were in the room, the men did not blame individual women; after all, these women were also colleagues regardless of their gender. Instead, male officers declared the women lucky to have a reliable job— why shouldn’t they take advantage of being women and, in most cases, also members of ethnic minorities? These men’s frustration was directed towards the large number of women in general and the forces seen as responsible for letting them in: the international community and, for some also, due to ethnic quotas, nationalist politics. Men’s objections to women in the police were not only about physical force, however, but also about the idea of a woman “commanding” them. It was somewhat acceptable that women seemed to be asserting themselves more in the home; that was after all “women’s realm.” But a woman with power over men on the job, and in such a male-defined institution as the police, was taking things too far. In a typical comment, a highly placed official told me about a woman in his position in another town’s police force with whom he said he joked all the time: I said I wouldn’t want to work under her. At home I’d be commanded by a woman and then I’d come to work and be under a woman, too! That just wouldn’t be acceptable! I would shoot myself right away! She knows I’m joking with her and we laugh about it.
Competing Masculinities and the International (Feminine) Gaze As will be clear by now, I was treated to many performances of aggressive and/or patriarchal masculinity, often in joking form and in front of audiences that included fellow male police colleagues. This posturing seemed to vacillate between resistance to the aesthetics of the international state-building project and a desire to appear “civilized” under the gaze of that very international project and its local adherents, embodied in this case by the female anthropologist.36 These inclinations, expressed through different configurations of masculinity, are further linked to longstanding local notions of “cultured” (kulturni) vs. “uncultured” (nekulturni).37 The effect of the audience was illustrated in the behavior of Ermin, a university educated officer in the cantonal MUP who had never been a uniformed beat cop, but who, in a room full of fellow male and female colleagues, invoked a model of violent masculinity in response to my questions. “Want to know why I joined?” he said. “I watched a lot of Dirty Harry movies when I was a kid. I wanted to be tough like him. I saw how he really sorted things out.” He went on to “complain” that the job rarely required him to pull his gun. However, when I spoke to him later one-on-one, he explicitly distanced himself from the focus on guns and acting tough and talked about wanting to help people and contribute to the community. On another occasion, I was introduced to the media spokesman for the cantonal police. After reading my officially stamped letter explaining my research focus on
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domestic violence, he began to affect the role of a backward peasant trying to appear civilized. He explained how he had prevented violence in his own home: “when I got married I skinned a cat [razgulio sam macˇku] in front of my wife.” This elicited groans and laughter from the room full of male and female detectives and senior officers. Darko, a high-ranking officer who was my key contact with the police, seemed concerned about my reaction, but he also wanted to let the whole room bask in the brutality of the image. He demonstrated by tearing apart an imaginary dangling object, warning, “If she didn’t obey. . . [ripping sound].” As the laughter died down, Darko and his female deputy took pains to reassure me that this was just a joke, as Darko had done many times after making mock sexist comments in my presence. At least, they told me, this custom is not real anymore, or if it ever had been it had only been practiced in villages. Rural backwardness was thus connected with patriarchal violence and “Balkan” customs not present among “civilized” urban dwellers.38 In one gesture, these officers both denigrated the (hyper-macho) non-urban population and expressed resistance to the (feminized) gaze of the demanding—and powerful— international community. Realizing I might use his words in my research, especially the phrase about skinning a cat, the police spokesman then moaned in mock anguish, again to the laughter of all in the room, “Joooj, now you’re going to write, ‘even the spokesman for the cantonal police used this phrase’!” This exclamation of fake fear served to reinforce their desire for me to understand that they were all against such violent forms of male control over women, but also to ridicule the earnestness of foreigners who insist on politically correct demeanor, and, despite all their power, miss the subtleties of local meanings. In contrast, and much as in the ubiquitous jokes in which the backward, rural Bosnian (Mujo or Haso) gets the best of the urbanite or foreigner despite the Bosnian’s crude and violent ways,39 this was a jab at the lack of soul perceived in foreign demands for rule of law, accountability, democratic procedure—even domestic violence legislation—celebrating a Bosnian love of life that is at least independent and “our own.” The sense of solidarity this creates closely resembles Herzfeld’s notion of cultural intimacy, or, in his even more appropriate phrase, a “fellowship of the flawed,”40 especially in that it “offer[s] citizens a sense of defiant pride in the face of a more formal or official morality and, sometimes, of official disapproval too.”41 In this case, though, official morality comes not from the state—indeed, the police are part of the state apparatus—but from international powers, and their defiance is tempered by a desire to be seen as rising above “the flawed.” By framing patriarchal and/or aggressive masculine stances as “kidding around” (zezanje), police officers could thus voice their opposition to the international agenda and reinforce their sense of masculinity—as individuals and as an institution—in the face of a demasculinizing international project. And, at the same time, they were able to distance themselves from truly becoming the primitive Bosnian man, a masculinity that is devalued both in local aspirations toward urban cosmopolitanism and in the modernizing paradigm of international intervention.
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Conclusion In many ways, what I observed among the Zenica police is no different from the ways in which (male) police officers in other societies have experienced similar changes: increased numbers of female police, tightening regulation of the use of violence, and new emphases on paperwork, community policing, and other “softer” forms of law enforcement.42 But the specific context of change in post-war Bosnia offers a privileged site for the examination of how state power and international intervention are being discursively imagined at the local level.43 That such imaginings are channeled through notions of gender is particularly salient in the lived experiences of individual police officers as representatives of the state, objects of various sorts of reform, and mediators of social relationships and conflicts at the local level. We have seen how state power, and especially (legitimated) violent power, is measured against notions of masculinity, as illustrated through concerns about its waning effectiveness through the use of force. Thus, the (Yugoslav) state of the past is romanticized through the idiom of aggressive, powerful masculinity44 much in the way that male dominance in the home is also projected onto an idealized past when women “knew their place.”45 This does not mean that the current state in its fragmented and multi-level forms is feminized; if anything it is merely exposed, at least in terms of the police, as not properly or fully masculine. But the cause of this emasculation becomes the forces unleashed by international intervention, including local (foreign-supported) women’s NGOs, the agenda of gender equality, and the additional changes all of this has meant for the police. The international community is thus feminized in the particular form of a threatening power of questionable legitimacy. This feminization does not necessarily have to be attached to women per se but at times also relates to a different, competing sort of masculinity seen more feminine in some ways.46 Issues of gender equality become fused to wider discourses on post-war recovery, transition to market democracy, “joining Europe,” or “becoming civilized.”47 In fact, in other realms such as that of ethnic reconciliation, civil society building, and formal politics, foreign actors target women (and certain men and masculinities) as embodiments of the kinds of new political subjects needed for these transformations to take place: they are constructed as non-violent, tolerant of difference, willing to compromise, and opposed to separatist nationalisms.48 Some of the police officers I met seemed to accept at least some aspects of this new order while others were resentful. Their jokes and semi-serious macho posturing in my presence reflected their ambivalence toward the international power I unwittingly represented. It was clear that the sort of masculinity these men were used to embodying as police officers—and representatives of a particular masculinized state idea—no longer fit with the imperatives of the new order as imagined by international actors. To be sure, these are not the only ways in which state power, masculinity, authority, or the very future of Bosnian society are being imagined and transformed in post-war Bosnia. Still, the narratives and performances of the Zenica police show both the
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ways in which such imaginings are gendered and, consequently, what kinds of gendered subjectivities are being made possible or excluded in the uneasy process of post-war and post-socialist transformations.
NOTES * This paper could not have been written without the generous help of Zˇeljko Karac´ and other members of the Zenica police, and from Medica Zenica, especially Dusˇka Andric´-Ruzˇicˇic´. I am also grateful for feedback and suggestions on the text from Jessica Greenburg, Sasha Milic´evic´, Marko Zˇivkovic´, and those who commented on earlier versions presented at meetings of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, April 2005 and the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology, Belgrade, May 2005, and a Department of Anthropology seminar at the University of Edinburgh, February 2006. 1. Examples in a substantial literature on gendered nationalisms in former Yugoslavia, mostly focused on women, include Wendy Bracewell, “Women and the Biological Reproduction of ‘the Nation’,” Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 19, Nos 1–2, 1996, pp. 17 –24; Vesna Kesic´, “From Reverence to Rape: An Anthropology of Ethnic and Genderized Violence,” in Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga, eds, Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2001); Maja Korac´ 1998, “Ethnic– National Conflicts and the Patterns of Social, Political and Sexual Violence against Women: The Case of Yugoslavia,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1998, pp. 153–182; Carol Lilly and Jill Irvine, “Negotiating Interests: Women and Nationalism in Serbia and Croatia, 1990 –1997,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2002, pp. 109– 144; Dubravka Zˇarkov, “From Media War to Ethnic War: The Female Body and Nationalist Processes in the Former Yugoslavia, 1986–1994,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Nijmegen, 1999. On (homo)sexuality and gender in Croatia and Serbia, see e.g. Kevin Moss, “Yugoslav Transgendered Heroes: ‘Virgina’ and ‘Marble Ass’,” Recˇ, Vol. 67, No. 13, 2002, pp. 347–367; Tatjana Pavlovic´, “Women in Croatia: Feminists, Nationalists, and Homosexuals,” in Sabrina P. Ramet, ed., Gender Politics in the Western Balkans: Women and Society in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Successor States (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 131–152. 2. Apart from the other articles in the present issue, these also include Dusˇan I. Bijelic´ and Lucinda Cole, “Sexualizing the Serb,” in Dusˇan I. Bijelic´ and Obrad Savic´, eds, Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 279–310; Wendy Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2000, pp. 563–590; Jessica Greenberg, “‘Goodbye Serbian Kennedy’: Zoran Ðindic´ and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2006, pp. 126–151; Sasho A. Lambevski, “Suck My Nation: Masculinity, Ethnicity, and the Politics of (Homo)Sex,” Sexualities, Vol. 2, 1999, pp. 397–419; Aleksandra Milic´evic´, “Joining Serbia’s Wars: Volunteers and Draft-Dodgers, 1991–1995,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 2004; Dubravka Zˇarkov, “The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media,” in Caroline O. N. Moser and Fiona C. Clark, eds, Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict, and Political Violence (London: Zed Books, 2001), pp. 69–82; Marko Zˇivkovic´, “Serbian Stories of Identity and Destiny in the 1980s and 1990s,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2001, pp. 93–114.
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3. The very few empirically based, scholarly studies that address gender in Bosnia are nearly exclusively about women. Examples aside from my own work, cited below, are: Cynthia Cockburn, The Space between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (London and New York: Zed Books, 1998); Cynthia Cockburn with Rada Stakic´-Domuz and Meliha Hubic´, Women Organizing for Change (Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Medica Zenica Infoteka, 2001); Cornelia Sorabji, “Mixed Motives: Islam, Nationalism and Mevluds in an Unstable Yugoslavia,” in Camillia Fawzi El-Sohl and Judy Mabro, eds, Muslim Women’s Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality (Providence: Berg, 1994), pp. 108–127. 4. Partial exceptions are Xavier Bougarel, “Death and the Nationalist: Martyrdom, War Memory and Veteran Identity among Bosnian Muslims,” in Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms, and Ger Duijzings, eds, The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-war Society (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, forthcoming), which focuses on a male social category but does not analyze its gendered aspects, and Stef Jansen, “Gendered Transformations of ‘Home’ amongst Displaced Bosnians,” paper presented at the conference Displacement: Global Dynamics and Gendered Patterns, University of Bergen, September 2005, which analyzes Bosnian masculinities but outside Bosnia itself. 5. Elissa Helms, “Women as Agents of Ethnic Reconciliation? Women’s NGOs and International Intervention in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2003, pp. 15 –33; Elissa Helms, “‘Politics Is a Whore’: Women, Morality and Victimhood in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms, and Ger Duijzings, eds, The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-war Society (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, forthcoming). 6. See Bijelic´ and Cole, “Sexualizing the Serb;” Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 13–15; Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo;” Zˇivkovic´, “Serbian Stories of Identity and Destiny.” 7. Often it is Serbian men, from Serbia proper, who are especially portrayed this way, or only Serbs are mentioned, i.e. without specific reference to those in Bosnia. For examples, see Euan Hague, “Rape, Power and Masculinity: The Construction of Gender and National Identities in the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Ronit Lentin, ed., Gender and Catastrophe (London: Zed Books, 1997), pp. 50 –63; Alexandra Stiglmayer, “The Rapes in Bosnia-Hercegovina,” in Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Hercegovina (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), pp. 147–160. 8. Dubravka Zˇarkov, “Gender, Orientalism and the History of Ethnic Hatred in the Former Yugoslavia,” in Helma Lutz and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds, Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism, and Gender in Europe (London/E. Haven, CT: Pluto Press, 1995). See also Elissa Helms, “‘East and West Kiss’: Gender, Orientalism, and Balkanism in MuslimMajority Bosnia-Herzegovina,” unpublished manuscript. 9. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, “Dislocating Masculinity: Gender, Power and Anthropology,” in Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, eds, Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994); for ethnographic accounts, see Orna Sasson-Levy, “Constructing Identities at the Margins: Masculinities and Citizenship in the Israeli Army,” Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2002, pp. 357–383; Thembisa Waetjen, “The Limits of Gender Rhetoric for Nationalism: A Case Study from Southern Africa,” Theory and Society, Vol. 30, 2001, pp. 121–152. 10. See Wendy Bracewell’s critique of one-dimensional representations of Balkan masculinity and her evidence to the contrary in the case of Serbia: Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo.”
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11. See Andrew Gilbert, “On Corrupt and Monstrous Forms: (Non)Post-socialism in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, November 2005. 12. For more on the importance of non-ethnic social categories in the political and social transformations of post-war Bosnia, see Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms, and Ger Duijzings, “Introduction,” in Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms, and Ger Duijzings, eds, The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-war Society (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, forthcoming). 13. See Sumantra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention (London: Hurst, 2002). For critical views of international institutions and statebuilding in Bosnia, see Robert Hayden, “‘Democracy’ without a Demos? The Bosnian Constitutional Experiment and the Intentional Construction of Nonfunctioning States,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2005, pp. 226–259; Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, “Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2003, pp. 60 –74. 14. On the shifts in these various levels of governance and the challenges for studying them in Southeast Europe, see Paul Stubbs, “Stretching Concepts Too Far? Multi-level Governance, Policy Transfer and the Politics of Scale in South East Europe,” Southeast European Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2005, pp. 66 –87. 15. Gemma Collantes Celador, “Police Reform: Peacebuilding through ‘Democratic Policing’?” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2005, pp. 364–376. The U.N. Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina was charged with implementing the technical and security provisions of Dayton. By the end of 2004, the European Union had taken over the U.N. Mission’s functions, IPTF being replaced by the EUPM in January 2003. 16. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2001, pp. 125–138. By “non-state” I refer to the fact that these institutions are not part of the Bosnian state, though international institutions very much depend on the power of foreign states. 17. For critical views of postwar economic policies, see Michael Pugh, “Transformation in the Political Economy of Bosnia since Dayton,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2005, pp. 448–476; Dominik Zaum, “Economic Reform and the Transformation of the Payment Bureaux,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2005, pp. 350–363. 18. See Elissa Helms, “Gendered Visions of the Bosnian Future: Women’s Activism and Representation in Post-War bosnia-Herzegovina,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2003. 19. The project, which has since been repeated all over Bosnia-Herzegovina, also provided training for judges and legal professionals, social workers, medical emergency workers, NGO activists, and journalists. It was sponsored by the U.N. Bosnia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In fact, it was due to this international support, rather than Medica’s influence or any cooperation from the state, that the state institutions involved had been persuaded to allow employees to attend the training as part of their regular paid work duties. 20. This was a part of the broad program of IPTF police reform, being continued by the EUPM, for which the goal was to reach “European standards” of about 10% female officers (interview with EUPM spokesperson Kristen Haupt, 10 August 2004, Sarajevo). 21. In a variety of contexts, the police have generally been constructed as an underiably masculine institution and individual profession: see e.g. Suzanne Franzway, Dianne
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22.
23. 24. 25.
26.
27. 28. 29.
30.
31.
32.
Court, and R. W. Connell, Staking a Claim: Feminism, Bureaucracy and the State (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1989); Steve Herbert, “‘Hard Charger’ or ‘Station Queen’? Policing and the Masculinist State,” Gender, Peace and Culture, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2001, pp. 55–71; Anastasia Prokos and Irene Padavic, “‘There Oughtta Be a Law against Bitches’: Masculinity Lessons in Police Academy Training,” Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2002, pp. 439–459. See Celador, “Police Reform.” The independent news media provided a steady stream of expose´s and investigative reports on organized crime and its links to former warlords and government officials, especially those in the ruling nationalist parties, who were shown to be getting away with all sorts of brazen crimes. This visibility added to the sense among ordinary Bosnians that the rule of law was in shambles and that no one could rely on the state for justice. Crime, police corruption, and political entanglements have also figured prominently in films about the post-war era by Bosnian directors, notably Pjer Zˇalica’s Fuse (Gori Vatra) and Srdan Vuletic´’s Summer in the Golden Valley (Ljeto u zlatnoj dolini). This is a pseudonym, as are all names of police officers in this paper. Translations of quotes from the Bosnian language are mine. Many of these officials were also retired or on the verge of retirement, so that the IPTF earned the nickname “International Pensioners’ Task Force.” Such orientalist hierarchies in which Africans and Asians figure as inferior to ‘civilized’ Europe are commonly invoked in Bosnia by both men and women (see Helms, “‘East and West Kiss’”). Racism in this region deserves further analysis, but the point here is that, for these male police officers, the presence of people from societies they perceived as inferior added insult to the injury they already felt in having their power restricted. For details of the political and administrative structure of post-war Bosnia, see e.g. Florian Bieber, “Governing Post-war Bosnia,” in Kinga Gal, ed., Minority Governance in Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002), pp. 322–344; Bose, Bosnia after Dayton. Zenica was the major mining and steel center of pre-war Bosnia; most of the approximately 23,000 workers, both men and women, had lost their jobs at the steel mill during the war. Celador, “Police Reform.” This arrangement also ensured that more members of ethnic minorities were also young, inexperienced women in a male-dominated institution who would therefore be less likely to “make trouble.” Research conducted in the Zenica area showed, on the contrary, that domestic violence was indeed widespread: Medica Zenica, To Live with(out) Violence—Final Report: Violence against Women, Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina (Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Infoteka, Medica Zenica, 1999). This British television program for very young children was also popular in Bosnia, where it ran overdubbed in the local language under the title Teletabisi. The program is saturated with messages about traffic safety, good citizenship, and ethnic/racial tolerance (multiculturalism). One also wonders where rapists figured in this ranking. In a study of male inmates of the Zenica prison (KP Dom), Zenica sociologist Alisabri Sˇabani found that the highest status was given to those who had committed murder, while rape was considered an unworthy crime and evidence of depravity. Murder was the understandable if regrettable result of (male) passions and violent reactions to insults or injustice: Alisabri Sˇabani, Sociologija zatvorenickog drustva: Socijalna klima zatvora zatvorenog tipa u Zenici u periodu od 1993. do 1997.g [Sociology of a Prisoner Society: The Social Climate of a Closed-Type
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33. 34.
35.
36.
37.
38. 39. 40.
41.
42.
43.
Prison in Zenica, 1992 –1997] (Sarajevo: Graffo M, 2005), pp. 123–156. One could thus speculate that rape was considered unmanly because “true men” should be able to attract women voluntarily, rather than having to get sex by force. As one highly placed official in the police jokingly commented, putting the stress on heterosexual virility, “We can’t afford ourselves the luxury of frisking women.” See Herbert, “‘Hard Charger’ or ‘Station Queen’?” Bonnie McElhinny, An Economy of Affect: Objectivity, Masculinity and the Gendering of Police Work,” in Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, eds, Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 159–171. One officer joked to me in front of his male colleagues, “You know how we like women dressed the best? In their natural skin! [u prirodnoj kozˇi]” (the word for “skin” is the same as that for “leather”). Even though I was not affiliated with any foreign organization, the mere fact of my being a Westerner was enough for one policeman to joke about “talking in front of the international community.” Kulturni/nekulturni only roughly corresponds with urban/rural distinctions but is closely linked to class aspirations, an aspect that requires more extensive analysis than space here allows. On kulturni/nekulturni distinctions before and after the war, see Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Cornelia Sorabji, “Managing Memories in Postwar Sarajevo: Individuals, Bad Memories and New Wars,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1–18; Anders Stefansson, “Urban Exile: Locals, Newcomers and the Cultural Transformation of Sarajevo,” in Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms, and Ger Duijzings, eds, The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-war Society (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, forthcoming). See Helms “East and West Kiss.” See Srdjan Vucetic, “Identity is a Joking Matter: Intergroup Humor in Bosnia,” Spaces of Identity, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2004, pp. 7–34. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 28; For more on the gendering of symbolic geographies and civilizational categories in Bosnia, including the association of “patriarchal men” with backward peasant culture, see Helms, “‘East and West Kiss’.” Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy, p. 3. On positive and deliberate invocations of the primitive Balkan male in Serbia and Croatia, see Stef Jansen, “Svakodnevni Orijentalizam: Dozˇivljaj ‘Balkana’/‘Evrope’ u Beogradu i Zagrebu” [Everyday Orientalism: Experiences of “Balkan”/“Europe” in Beograd and Zagreb], Filozofija i drusˇtvo, Vol. 18, 2002, pp. 33–71; Mattijs van de Port, Gypsies, Wars, and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998). For example, Herbert, “‘Hard Charger’ or ‘Station Queen’?” Prokos and Padavic, “‘There Outta Be a Law’;” Malcolm Young, An Inside Job (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Bougarel, Helms, and Duijzings, “Introduction.” See also Akhil Gupta, “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1995, pp. 375–402; Stubbs, “Stretching Concepts Too Far?” Anthropologists working in other post-war countries with international presence and struggling states have noted that such situations illuminate the intersection of local processes with state and transnational forms of power, even shedding light on the dynamics of globalization itself. See George E. Marcus, “General Comments,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1994, pp. 423–428. And see Carol J. Greenhouse, “Introduction: Altered
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44.
45.
46. 47.
48.
States, Altered Lives,” in Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz and Kay B. Warren, eds, Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 1–34. This complicates observations about more totalitarian state-socialist systems, which were seen to have de-masculinized men or infantilized the entire population (Katherine Verdery, “From Parent State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1994, pp. 225–255; Peggy Watson, “Eastern Europe’s Silent Revolution: Gender,” Sociology, Vol. 27, No. 3, 1993, pp. 471–487, here 483). As representatives of the state, and in post-Yugoslav retrospection, police officers saw their masculinity as strengthened under socialism, though ordinary citizens may still have experienced a de-masculinization in some ways during this period. This is a question for further research. Individual concerns about masculinity vis-a`-vis women, sexuality, male breadwinner roles, and class aspirations were another aspect of police narratives that I have not discussed in detail here due to lack of space. For related findings on competing masculinities in Serbia, see Greenberg, “‘Goodbye Serbian Kennedy’.” Although this discourse superficially reminds many Bosnians of the socialist emphasis on gender equality, the current thrust is towards women’s integration into a newly shaped neoliberal economy, supported by democratic institutions (Vanessa Pupavac, “Empowering Women? An Assessment of International Gender Policies in Bosnia,” International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2005, pp. 391–405). On similar changes in other post-socialist countries see e.g. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism: A Comparative Historical Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). See Helms, “Women as Agents of Ethnic Reconciliation?”
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