National Identity in Serbia


Book Description

The autonomous province of Vojvodina in Serbia is little-known in the English-speaking world, even though it is a territory of high significance for the development of Serbian national identity. Vojvodina's multi-ethnic composition and historical experience has also encouraged the formation of a distinct regional identity. This book analyses the evolution of Vojvodina's identity over time and the unique pattern of ethnic relations in the province. Although approximately 25 ethnic communities live in Vojvodina, it is by no means a divided society. Intercultural cohabitation has been a living reality in the province for centuries and this largely accounts for the lack of ethnic conflict. Vassilis Petsinis explores Vojvodina's intercultural society and shows how this has facilitated the introduction of flexible and regionalized legal models for the management of ethnic relations in Serbia since the 2000s. He also discusses recent developments in the region, most notably the arrival of refugees from Syria and Iraq, and measures the impact that these changes have had on social stability and inter-group relations in the province.







National Identity in Serbia


Book Description

The autonomous province of Vojvodina in Serbia is little-known in the English-speaking world, even though it is a territory of high significance for the development of Serbian national identity. Vojvodina's multi-ethnic composition and historical experience has also encouraged the formation of a distinct regional identity. This book analyses the evolution of Vojvodina's identity over time and the unique pattern of ethnic relations in the province. Although approximately 25 ethnic communities live in Vojvodina, it is by no means a divided society. Intercultural cohabitation has been a living reality in the province for centuries and this largely accounts for the lack of ethnic conflict. Vassilis Petsinis explores Vojvodina's intercultural society and shows how this has facilitated the introduction of flexible and regionalized legal models for the management of ethnic relations in Serbia since the 2000s. He also discusses recent developments in the region, most notably the arrival of refugees from Syria and Iraq, and measures the impact that these changes have had on social stability and inter-group relations in the province.




Serbian Spaces of Identity


Book Description

Yugoslavia may be gone, but it lives on in the memory of its last generation, along with the potent mix of nationalisms, globalization, and historical tensions that helped dissove it. If the dissolution of Yugoslavia has taught us anything, it is that nationalism and globalization are not mutually exclusive. Drawing on the recollections of key figures among the last Serbian generation to grow up Yugoslav, this book explores the transition from socialsim to captitalism, from the dream of pan-Slavic working class identity to the contentious captitalist reality that gave us the work Balkanization.




Nationalism, Myth, and the State in Russia and Serbia


Book Description

This book examines the role of Russian and Serbian nationalism in dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991.




Politics of Identity in Serbia


Book Description

"These thought-provoking essays on the Serbian ethno-myth make this book a valuable contribution to the literature on the former Yugoslavia." —The Journal of Slavic Military Studies "The newspaper articles . . . offer incisive, ironic, and often witty analyses of nationalist discourse found in a wide variety of texts, including political speeches." — Slavic Review Symbols are central to politics. In this groundbreaking work, Ivan Colevic investigates the symbols of politics and the politics of symbols in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovnia. The first part of the work, "The Serbian Political Ethno-Myth," analyzes Serbian political mythology about the nation and nationalism in particular, as well as the role of narratives in political discourse, and notions of time, nature, borders, heroism, and national identity. The second part, "From the History of Serbian Political Mythology," is concerned with the historical development of Serbian political myths. The third part, "Characters and Figures of Power," comprises case studies which analyze political symbolism, myth, rhetoric, and propaganda. These studies are based on examples gleaned from the Serbian press, academic texts and literature, political speeches, and from everyday life. Finally, Colevic investigates the relationship between the masses, mass culture, and politics, including the recruitment of soccer fans into the war in the former Yugoslavia, and how symbolic communication was used by Serbia's anti-Milosevic opposition.




Ideologies and National Identities


Book Description

Twentieth-century Southeastern Europe endured three, separate decades of international and civil war, and was marred in forced migration and wrenching systematic changes. This book is the result of a year-long project by the Open Society Institute to examine and reappraise this tumultuous century. A cohort of young scholars with backgrounds in history, anthropology, political science, and comparative literature were brought together for this undertaking. The studies invite attention to fascism, socialism, and liberalism as well as nationalism and Communism. While most chapters deal with war and confrontation, they focus rather on the remembrance of such conflicts in shaping today's ideology and national identity.




Nationalism and Territory


Book Description

Why do nations come into conflict? What factors lead to the horrors of ethnic cleansing? This timely book offers clear-eyed answers to these questions by exploring how national identity is shaped by place, focusing especially on Serbia, Hungary, and Romania. Moving beyond studies of nationalism that consider only the economic and geostrategic value of territory, George W. White shows that the very core of national identity is intimately bound to specific places. Indeed, nations define themselves in terms of spaces that have historical, linguistic, and religious meaning, as Serbs have clearly demonstrated in Kosovo. These territories are concrete expressions of a nationAIs identity, both past and present. With his detailed analysis of the places that define national identity in Southeastern Europe, White convincingly shows why territorial disputes so often escalate into war.




Balkan Identities


Book Description

Balkan Identities brings together historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars all working under the shared conviction that the only way to overcome history is to intimately understand it. The contributors of Balkan Identities focus on historical memory, collective national memory, and the political manipulation of national identities. They refine our understanding of memory and identity in general and explore and assess the significance of particular manifestations of Balkan national identities and national memories in the region. The essays in Balkan Identities grapple with three major problems: the construction of historical memory, sites of national memory, and the mobilization of national identities. While most essays focus on a single country (e.g. Croatia, Romania, Turkey, Cyprus, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia), they are in dialogue with each other and share an opposition to rigid isolationist identities. Illuminating and challenging, Balkan Identities demonstrates the ever-changing nature of a troubled and culturally vibrant region.




The Literature of Nationalism


Book Description

The Literature of Nationalism concerns literature in its broadest sense and the manner in which, in belles lettres, the oral tradition and journalism, language and literature create national/nationalist myths. It treats East European culture from Finland to 'Yugoslavia', from Bohemia to Romania, from the nineteenth century to today. One third of the book concerns women and ethnic identity, and the rest covers subjects as varied as Bulgarian Fascism and the impact of political change on language in Hungary and ex-Yugoslavia.