Cities, Nationalism, and Democratization

摘要

The ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, like the sustained lethal violence in the Basque region and the stubborn nationalism of Catalan region that challenged Spain's hegemony, represent classic struggles of the central power versus localism. Scott A. Bollens's Cities, Nationalism, and Democratization looks at these conflicts as a test of how urbanism influences larger political struggles and demonstrates, as he puts it, "why some cities play a progressive role in shaping new societal paths" (p. 2). The four urban cases he explores in detail-Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Barcelona as the main city in the Catalan region, and Bilbao in the Basque region-were not all successes in overcoming conflicts. But even where urbanism was not successful in bridging intergroup conflicts and rivalries (as most poignantly revealed in Mostar), three of the four cases suggest that engagement in the "urban project" allows space for consensus to be nurtured, which in the long run can yield deeper reconciliation.