"I was working in Bosnia when the 2009 UNDP report on social capital [UNDP, National Human Development Report 2009, "The Ties That Bind: Social Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina," 2009] was published," explains Karla Koutkova (PhD '16). "It concluded that štela was the key to everything in Bosnia and Herzegovina." Koutkova explains that štela is the term used to describe the people and connections that one needs to, for example, get a job, be admitted to a university, or see a doctor. "If you ask people in Bosnia, they will tell you that it is needed for everything," she says.
The UNDP report got Koutkova thinking. Is this really true? And, if it is true, what does this mean? How, she wondered, should one think about this phenomenon? "There is this widespread perception," she says, "that using social connections to achieve something is corrupt, and so it's a bad thing. It's something you find in developing countries, but not in the west. I was curious about this." Koutkova goes on to note that taking advantage of informal networks is of course not unique to Bosnia. "It exists in many countries, but there were circumstances in Bosnia that made it an especially interesting case study."
Those circumstances related to some of the changes that had taken place in Bosnia as a result of the 1995 Dayton Accords that called for the establishment of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Office of the High Representative (OHR). These two bodies were given enormous authority to enact decisions at all levels of government. Another characteristic of post-Dayton Bosnia was the proliferation in the number of NGOs, many of which were supported as part of a broad effort to create a dynamic civil society in the country. This initiative reflected the strong belief in the international community that a strong and vibrant civil society is critical to successful state-building.
"If reliance on informal networks is something that should diminish in importance as state structures are formalized, as processes for accountability are put in place, as civil society becomes stronger, why was it still so important in Bosnia in 2009?" Koutkova asked. She realized very quickly that in order to get answers to these questions, she would need to do ethnographic research. "I didn't have a lot of training in this area," she says, "so I had to learn quickly." According to Associate Professor and thesis co-supervisor Elissa Helms, Koutkova learned not only quickly, but also very well. "Karla successfully carried out ethnographic research with a keen anthropological eye for detail while still placing her observations and experiences into a wider field of power and political structures," she says. Koutkova spent 13 months conducting participant observations in three different research environments: a local organization, an international agency, and in a civil society anti-corruption network.
"What I found," explains Koutkova, "is that the boundary between the formal and informal is blurry." She also found that informality is not just something that is pushed "from below" by local groups and actors eager to assert themselves against the "formalizing initiatives of the state." It is also "pushed down" through a process "in which the local intermediaries translate concepts like democracy and corruption so that they make sense for the on-the-ground reality." According to Koutkova, international players were sending a very mixed message: they were both distancing themselves from local informal practices while also investing in them as they realized the important role they played in building trust and cohesion in Bosnian society.
Reflecting on Koutkova's contribution, Helms commented, "This thesis most certainly contributes fresh material and new insights to the anthropology of foreign intervention and aid, to the study of informality, and to local-level studies of post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina."