The Fluid Dynamics of Viscous Identities: Sedimentations of Time in Five Late-Ottoman Refugee Towns in Bosnia since 1863

Abstract:This article develops Reinhart Koselleck's concept of 'sediments of time' processually, as sedimentation and erosion of the social and physical indicators of the presence of Self- and Other-identifying communities through time. We expand the concept of the 'fluidity' of ethnic or national identities to include viscosity, the resistance of a liquid to flowing freely. Group identities may be viscous, changing slowly and maintaining much continuity through time. Fluidity thus becomes a variable quality, not simply a binary opposite of 'fixed'. Using this model we analyse developments in five towns newly founded by the Ottoman empire in 1862–63 on the northern border of Bosnia, to house Muslims expelled from Serbia and reinforce the border with the Habsburgs in places where few Muslims were then living. Throughout, the populations of the towns were largely self-distinguishing between Muslims (Bosniaks), Roman Catholics (Croats), and Orthodox Christians (Serbs). By 2013, only one settlement was still majority Muslim (now Bosniak), one was majority Croat, two majority Serb, and one nearly equal in Serb and Bosniak populations; though other balances had obtained in earlier periods. To explain the flow of social interactions through time in these towns we develop a model drawn from fluid dynamics, of the differences between the laminar flows of liquids that seem smooth but are composed of layers of differing composition that do not much intermix, and turbulence, when such laminar flows meet an obstruction. Interactions between members of ethnoreligious communities may also flow with apparent smoothness, yet in a laminar fashion. When events occur that disrupt this flow, by newly created borders or the transformation of jurisdictional boundaries into barriers, the resulting turbulence, often violent, may lead to the separation of some of the layers, possibly into new forms of laminar flow. By paying attention to the varying ways in which physical and social indictors of such communities have developed through time in five contrasting locations, we gain a better understanding of wider historical processes that continue to be in play.