Abstract
In this chapter, the authors revisit the issue of intergroup contact and its effect on prejudice towards out-groups. They argue that the critical point is to understand under which specific conditions the experience of heterogeneity can actually lead to constructive intergroup relations. The aim of this study is to investigate when the co-presence of different ethnic groups within a society leads to positive or negative intergroup relationships. Bosnia and Herzegovina is treated as a case study of conflict of interests and the emergence of cross-cultural identities. Indeed, former Bosnia and Herzegovina was characterised by high levels of ethnic heterogeneity and cultural diversity, which were redesigned by the war conflict of the 90s. On the basis of analyses of TRACES data, the authors considered under which psychological conditions the contextual heterogeneity constructively influenced adult attitudes towards others and society. The effects of growing up in a heterogonous context on adult levels of tolerance, their sense of agency and their trust in social norms were investigated. The results suggest that the context in which people currently live is more salient than the one in which they grew up and that heterogeneity in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina buffers people against a sense of anomy. However, heterogeneity does not protect individuals who highly identify with their ethnic in-group against intergroup intolerance. In other words, the effects of contextual heterogeneity on attitudes towards out-groups—and on discouragement about social life—are moderated by ethnic identification.
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- 1.
Some areas were merged due to a lack of information on municipalities, which rendered it impossible to reconstruct some of the TRACES territorial divisions.
- 2.
The Brcko district remained under the administration of the International Community, in accordance with the Dayton Agreement. It was an “experimental” field of community reconstruction and multiethnic administration (Jeffrey 2006).
- 3.
ELF was computed on the basis of 1991 census data. This index measures the probability that two randomly selected individuals from the whole population will be from different groups. The ELF index was created by Soviet scholars (Atlas Narodov Mira 1964) and was later popularised by Taylor and Hudson (1972). It is expressed by the formula: \( ELF\, = \,1 - \,\sum\nolimits_{i = 1}^N {q_i^2} \) where \( {q_i} \) is the share of group i of a total of N groups.
- 4.
The unweighted indicator of risk of victimisation computed for each survey area is defined by the ratio between the estimated number of events (i.e., individual-quarter units corresponding to the occurrence of an event) in the population of an area by the estimated total number of individual-quarter units in that population.
- 5.
Example items of the scale are as follows: With everything so uncertain these days, it almost seems as though anything could happen; Everything changes so quickly these days that I often have trouble deciding which are the right rules to follow; People were better off in the old days when everyone knew just how he was expected to act; It seems to me that other people find it easier to decide what is right than I do.
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Morselli, D., Passini, S. (2014). Beyond Ethnic Intolerance: Traces and Benefits of Ethnic Diversity in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina. In: Spini, D., Elcheroth, G., Corkalo Biruski, D. (eds) War, Community, and Social Change. Peace Psychology Book Series, vol 17. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7491-3_7
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