RRPP Annual Conference Ohrid, May 27-29, 2015 From Inclusive Identities to Inclusive Societies: Exploring Complex Social Identity in the Western Balkans - RRPP research project - Marija Branković Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade, Serbia Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade

About the project Project title: From Inclusive Identities to Inclusive Societies: Exploring Complex Social Identity in the Western Balkans Implementing institutions: 1. Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade (leading institution) 2. Faculty of Philosophy, Skopje 3. Faculty of Philosophy, Banja Luka 4. Sarajevo School of Science and Technology 5. Individual researchers from Macedonia and Kosovo Project duration: 18 months

Research team 18 researchers: 4 countries 11 females, 7 males 9 PhDs, 8 PhD candidates, 1 MA

Project objectives  Exploring the complexity and inclusiveness of social identity among Western Balkan youth.  Exploring relationships between social identity complexity and inclusiveness and a number of socially relevant attitudes and behaviors (attitudes towards out- groups, political attitudes, civic activism etc.).  Defining contexts that foster complex and inclusive social identities.

Key constructs and measures Social Identity Complexity (SIC) - the degree to which different identities are both differentiated and integrated in a person’s mental representation of her or his group membership e.g. When you think of people who are Serbs, how many of them are Orthodox? When you think of people who are citizens of Serbia, how many of them are Serbs?

Key constructs and measures Social Identity Inclusiveness (SII) - how inclusively or exclusively one defines the in-group from the combination of multiple cross-cutting categories Triple categorization task: categorization into “US” or “THEM” Stimuli varied by: ethnicity, nationality and religious affiliation Structure of the task:

Citizen of Kosovo Serbian Orthodox Slobodanka Filipović Stimuli from the triple categorization task US THEM

Citizen of Serbia Albanian Muslim Flutra Demiri Stimuli from the triple categorization task US THEM

Study design

Methodology a.Quantitative survey Planned sample size: 800 participants, aged between 20 and 30. Sample structure: Quotas: gender, education, ethnicity Procedure: electronic testing in controlled conditions (Qualtrics) Master questionnaire developed in English, translated to local languages

Methodology b.Qualitative investigation Focus group discussions Case studies (one per town) Aim: Validate and extend on quantitative findings regarding personal perceptions of identities, their relations and boundaries, as well as contextual factors affecting the salience of different identities. Open questions: ideas for case study analysis

Preliminary results Social Identity Complexity Social identity complexity depended on both ethnic and religious background, as well as minority/majority status of the social group. Lower identity complexity was related with strong national identification. *Based on database from Serbia (N =196) * Theoretical range of the SIC measure: 1-11, higher number – less complexity

Preliminary results Social Identity Inclusiveness SII depended on both ethnic and religious background, as well as minority/majority status of the social group. Strong identification with ethnic and religious groups predicted less identity inclusiveness. Base: Database from Serbia (N=196) SII measure theoretical range: 1-24

Preliminary results Correlations with out-group attitudes Different measures of out-group attitudes were significantly correlated with identity complexity and inclusiveness, indicating significant predictive power of the employed identity measures.

Discussion topics Policy implications – how to use the findings to influence policy makers Possible perspectives to analyze and discuss the findings (from other disciplines) Understanding the impact of sociohistorical context on social identity

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