Leadership and Loyalities in Multiethnic Herzegowina

Political Power and loyalty in a multiethnic region is closely bound to the historical social relations of the respective ethnic or confessional groups. Using the regional example of multiethnic Herzegovina this research aims to reconstruct the micro-political functioning of political participation in a regional society in the course of changing political systems and social transformation - from Ottoman times until the present. It also wants to explain how norms and everyday realities of the society reciprocally influence the power constellations. Analyzing concepts of leadership and loyalty is the special focus of this research. For the region of Herzegovina, which is inhabited by Muslim-Bosniac, Serb, and Croat populations, the following fields of theoretical discussion have turned out to have considerable explanatory potential: 1) ethnic politics 2) kinship/family, 3)clientelism, and 4) violent conflict. Anthropological and historical methods are combined in the investigations. Field work should help to reconstruct everyday norms and strategies of dealing with power. Results from archival work will enable to understand which systems of leadership and loyalties have shaped the society in Herzegovina in its history. This empirical work done in the Herzegovina since summer 1999 will be completed within the next months. But the whole research needs now, in a second step, further exchange of thoughts with partners experienced and specialized in the respective theoretical fields of discussion, which are in the foreground of this study. In this way it is hoped to accomplish the goal of investigating research questions in a regional perspective but in a general and comparative way.