During my second visit to Mostar in April 2015 I was told that the city is so divided taxi drivers will not cross the bridges to the other side of the city. In September 2015, I was with a friend who lived in Mostar we had sat outside where she worked catching up, it was late when we finished talking, and she said I should get a taxi back to my hotel, I mentioned what I had been told previously and we both wondered if the driver would not want to cross the river. When the taxi arrived, the driver told us both āI will take you to Vienna if you pay meā. While this is somewhat anecdotal, what I aim to demonstrate through this narrative is the existence of generalisations which become social myths. The narrative of divisions so entrenched that they cause taxi drivers (presumably from both sides) to veto fares which cross the river, emphasises the enduring narrative of the intractability of the conflict. This may be the case for some, it may align with a lived experience or one heard in passing, it may once have been a common problem, and indeed for some it may still be. However, it is important to query beyond generalisations regarding the persistence of ethno-nationalistic divisions in the city which have the potential to exacerbate and maintain divisions. Such generalisations do of course, have roots in lived experiences that are space-time dependent, but they should be viewed as such. However, it is hard to disentangle past experience from future expectations and such space-time dependent negative interactions become border markers and cautionary tales which, for some, limit movement and use of the city space. Therefore, unpacking how intractable conflict narratives are established is an important part of establishing ideal conditions for conflict transformation . Then the question is, how do cities become divided? The answer is typically due to political and institutional divisions materialised through urban planning and jurisdictional divisions which can direct the social use of space. Therefore, narratives of social movement are important to consult in order to understand the extent to which institutional divisions impact on the use of city space, and to explore how other social divisions direct movement in the city. Space and time are interrelated, we know this at a basic level because in our everyday lives we are generally supposed to be in a certain space at a certain time, we order our lives in space with respect to time. In this work, the interrelation is demonstrated through the transformation of spaces, and memory , through movement over time. Space, time and memory work together and contribute to the formation of spatial identities, these are not static constructs, but are malleable and, importantly, up for negotiation- and transformation.
The City of Mostar
Preceding the 1992ā1995 conflict, Mostar was a popular tourist location, drawing visitors to the namesake bridge, Stari Most (Old Bridge ). The name, Mostar, is a derivative of mostari or ābridge keepersā (UNESCO 2005: 178) which demonstrates the importance of the bridge in Mostarian identity and heritage. The destruction of the bridge in 1993 became symbolic of the divisiveness of the Bosnian war and the far-reaching consequences of the violence, which transcended the space, but also the period of the war. While the reconstruction of the bridge was hailed as providing reconciliation in the city this can be regarded as only having been realised symbolically as the city remains divided (Calame and PaÅ”iÄ 2009). Over the course of the 1992ā1995 Bosnian war the city was heavily damaged, by the end of the war the population of Mostar was largely displaced, and the divide in the city was entrenched. This was enshrined by the Dayton Agreement which cemented the conflict divisions nation-wide. Mostar embodies the wider country, as divisions in both the city and the country are spatialised. The divide in Mostar is maintained across a spectrum of actors operating across different spaces and is intermeshed with the formation of identity (Bjƶrkdahl 2015: 113). While spatial divisions within cities are not limited to post-conflict contexts, intrastate conflict can exacerbate other divisions (class, gender, sexual orientation, age) along the fault lines of ethno-nationalistic identities. In post-conflict academic discourse, the city of Mostar is characterised by the divided city narrative, this is not to say that the city is not divided, however, there is a risk of condensing diverse narratives of space which can overlook conflict transformation at a local level. Therefore, as Palmberger (2013: 558) proposes, consulting āpersonal accountsā in Mostar can explore cross boundary movement and previous or current shared spaces of movement . Personal narratives also provide two important elements to research, firstly, they provide an on the ground qualitative account of the use of the city space which provides a different understanding of the space. Secondly, through these narratives, the agentive capability of social actors to transform space can be demonstrated.
The 1992ā1995 war occurred following the dissolution of the conceptualisation of the former Yugoslavia . In institutional narratives and journalistic reporting, binaries emerged through the categorisation of ethnicities involved in the conflict. The designated identities of Bosniak, Serb, and Croat in political, academic, and social narratives became short hand for an assumed lineage or heritage and fundamentally denote a shared experience of space. This book unpacks place experience from these binaries, but for functional use the designations of āBosniakā, āSerbā, and āCroatā are used. These designations are used in acknowledgement that there is no absolute experience drawn from these identity categorisations in past, present or future social spaces . Therefore, while these identities are important, there is potential for these designations to be applied divisively. It is important to discuss the signifiers of the āBosniakā, āSerbā, and āCroatā labels as those that permeated the conflict and divided former neighbours and friends, but to underscore that designations of ethnic identity did not result in a shared experience. In summary, categorisations of individuals as āBosniakā, āSerbā, and Croatā does not represent communal experiences inclusive of these ethnic designations, as complex aspects of identity and social roles can transcend these binaries as variables of social movement.
The Social Narratives
In June 2014, I first went to Mostar to discuss the potential research approach with local residents. During this first trip I proposed the use of maps as the methodology of the research. The maps were to be used to spatialise movement in order to explore the extent to which institutional narratives of divisions direct social movement. The methodology was positively received and the following year across March and April 2015, the first round of data collection took place in the form of individual interviews with participants, in these interviews participants drew and narrated a map of their social movement. Following on from this trip in September 2015 the Map of Mostar workshop was conducted at AbraÅ”eviÄ . The workshop turned into a group interview with a group map produced, further interviews and follow-up interviews were also conducted, with some follow up questions also conducted over email. During field research individuals were approached to participate through different channels. This took the form of emailing, visiting the student unions of the universities in the city and talking to residents. The following is a small summary of how participants became involved in the research process. In April 2015 I emailed the Rock School director, after learning about the school in the city. The director, participant S, agreed to talk the next day, and after an informal conversation about the research he introduced me to two students at the school waiting to start their music lesson, who became participants A and B. Participant C (a member of upper management at UWC) and N (charity worker) were first contacted via email, after the interview participant C then introduced me to two UWC studentsā D and E. While participant N introduced me to their colleagues O, P and Q, who all took part in a group interview. I met participant K (current youth politician and former Student Union President) at the University Džemal BijediÄ Student Union office; and he put me in contact with participant M (former Student Union president of The University of Mostar and founder of an NGO in the city). I first met with participant J (former director of OKC AbraÅ”eviÄ ) for an informal chat after emailing the centre. In April 2015 participant J then put me in touch with participant F (international volunteer), G (one of the Street Arts Festival organisers), and in September 2015 put me in touch with participant H (former director of OKC AbraÅ”eviÄ ). I came into contact with participant L (from the Mostar planning department) as they had been speaking at a workshop in the city. Similarly, I met participant I while walking around Mostar, they also took part in the workshop and put me in touch with participant R (from the Sarajevo planning department). A letter was assigned to each participant to ensure anonymity and corresponds with the order in which the interviews or exchanges took place. The randomised and opportunity-based recruitment of participants allowed for interest driven involvement with the research. The above participantsā narratives of spaces and places in the city are the focus of this book.
Space and Place
Experiences of space could be interpreted as a conflict; new experiences cause one spatial reality to cease to exist through the creation of a new one. Understanding this as a process of transformation can help analysis at all levels in order to understand the interconnectivity of spatial agency. We may feel this tension when returning somewhere after a long time away, what was once familiar is somewhat unfamiliar though it is the same āplaceā it is no longer the same space for us. Fundamentally, though we are the main narrator of our experiences of space, spaces are social, our experiences of them is informed by those we interact with within them. Places, are a collective accumulation of social narratives of spaces, and represent spatial power dynamics. If we think about a internationally well-known city such as London we do not first think of the terraced houses in Clapham or the graffiti on an underpass. ...