Abstract

Abstract: Recent sociological studies on interethnic and interfaith relations and reconciliation (Kuburic et al. 2006, Wilkes et al. 2013) have highlighted the importance of (mis)trust, encoded in the perceptions of (in)security and of each other among dominant ethnic groups, for reconciliation attempts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as politics in the region. In this talk, I will reflect on these data with a help of some philosophy (Wittgenstein, Onora O’Neill) and discursive study of different religious and secular narratives and perceptions of each other among Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats and ‘others’ in Bosnia. Examining chosen representations of (each) other in these discourses, I will suggest that they manifest different kinds of trust and mistrust (non-reflective, reflective/conscious, fear-based, dogmatic, idealized, etc.).

Bio: Dr Gorazd Andrejč is a Junior Research Fellow at The Woolf Institute and an Associate Member of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. His research is in theological and philosophical perspectives of religious language, the nature of belief, as well as interfaith relations and disagreement, especially in the Balkans and Central Europe. Previously, he was an Associate Lecturer teaching Philosophy of Religion in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, where he also completed his PhD in philosophical theology.