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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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