Föreställningar om etnicitet som orsak till politiskt våld - ett antropologiskt perspektiv. En diskursanalys av artiklar i svensk dagspress om kriget i forna Jugoslavien 1991-1995

Sammanfattning: The aim of the thesis is to examine discourses about political violence categorised as “ethnic” in academic literature and the media. Employing the method of discourse analysis, the study analyses news coverage of the wars in former Yugoslavia 1991-1995. The theory applied is based on Michel Foucault’s theory of the relationship between power and discourse in the constitution of knowledge, and the main arguments are supported by the work of the political scientist V. P Gagnon Jr. and the social anthropologist Stef Jansen. The empirical material consists of 60 articles from three Swedish newspapers; Svenska Dagbladet, Sydsvenska Dagbladet and Arbetet. Three types of representations of the war in former Yugoslavia are identified in the analysis; primordialism and “ethnic hatred”, neoprimordialism and ethnic mobilisation, as well as the Balkan perceived as a primitive “other”. It is argued that journalistic stories in the news coverage are imbedded in dominant discourses that produce knowledge and “truths” about so-called “ethnic conflicts”, assuming that ethnicity is the cause of violence. Therefore, the thesis shows the need for anthropological knowledge about the process of ethnic identification during conflict.