the
power of stereotypes
Throughout
his book International conflict resolution (Continuum, London
and New York, 2001), Charles Hauss has stressed the way stereotypes
and other aspects of the image of the enemy hinder effective
conflict resolution. Yet biased friends and enemies aren’t the
only problem - the outside world can misread developments in the
region because of misleading stereotypes in general culture,
stereotypes attributed to shallow journalism, movies, fiction
literature, tour books etc. And in the chapter on Bosnia, Hauss has
placed an insert, in a graphic box, titled Where stereotypes come
from, in which misleading stereotypes are largely attributed to
a single author and a single book:
"In
the late 1930's, the British novelist and travel writer Rebecca West
paid three brief visits to Yugoslavia. The country already was in
deep trouble as a result of its own divisions and the looming threat
of a second world war. Driven by a fear that her left-wing friends
were not prepared to stand up to Hitler, West's account of
Yugoslavia undoubtedly exaggerated the degree both of tensions
within the Yugoslavia of her day and of the historic hatreds between
the ethnic groups.
But,
because Black Lamb and Grey Falcon was the most widely read
and respected book on Yugoslavia for decades, her sense of a country
riven by centuries-old vendettas has colored much of academic and
journalistic coverage of the region ever since."
I
like the book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. And I don’t
think Rebecca West exaggerated the degree of either tensions within
the Yugoslavia of her day or the historic hatreds between the ethnic
groups. It was the outside world’s failure to take Rebecca West
seriously enough. |

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