Lepa Mladjenovic: CARING
AT THE SAME TIME: Making Feminist Politics Among Women of Two Sides the Front
Lines
"If one lives in a fascist
state it is not surprising news that the other state who does not want to collaborate
with a fascist one refuses visa to the citizens of the fascist one. So I was refused
visa. I want to send my warm words of greeting to women who are in similar and
different situations as mine, working in the war and post war zones. I am a feminist
from the region of Former Yugoslavia where the war started in 1991. I have a Serbian
name and live in Serbia, which means that inside of pro-fascist Serbian regime
it is a privilege, which means that I live in a state Serbia whose government
has started four wars in the region (with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and last year Kosovo). I have as well in the three months of spring lived a war
of bombing of NATO over the town and a country I live in and at the same time
witnessed, from afar, the state ethnic cleansing of Albanian population in Kosovo
by Serbian police and army. Kosovo is 300km away from Belgrade, a town where I
live, and is still a region of the state named FR Yugoslavia (one part of the
former Yugoslavia)."
Women
activists' declaration on principles for concrete political action
"After
almost 20 years of state-imposed apartheid in Kosovo/a and damaged multi-ethnic
and multi-cultural links, knowledge and tradition of communication, all deeply
affected by the loss of life and violence of recent events in the Region and by
the last tragic phase of the Yugoslav war, we women activists, participants in
the Trans-europ‚ennes Conference `Women activists in conflicts: a democratic perspective
for the Balkans', held at the Royaumont Foundation from 3 to 6 December 1999,
have decided to work on the following:"
REGIONAL
WOMEN'S CONFERENCE
"The first Regional Women’s
Conference, is to take place with representatives of women’s groups from Kosova
and from other parts in the region. It represents a historic occasion, achance
to broaden our networks, and to increase visibility of the work of the many women’s
groups, their activities and their role in building civil society. This will be
the first time that Kosovar women have had the opportunity to organise a conference
starting from their needs and experience. This conference will draw on the experiences
and expertise of other groups from the Balkans."
Chris
Corrin: Gender Audit of Reconstruction Programmes in South Eastern Europe
"Since 1997,
the Urgent Action Fund (UAF) has supported 23 interventions by women in support
of the human rights of women and girls in 16 conflict areas in various regions
of the world. Now, with support from the Ford Foundation, and in partnership with
the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD)
and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the UAF is launching
an initiative to strengthen the role of women in building a coherent, gender sensitive
policy for human rights and democratic development throughout South Eastern Europe."
Diane Minor,
Communications Director: Bosnia 101: A Personal Account of "Something Large"
"As I set off on a leave of absence in Europe, a friend
in Washington told me she was also going to co-lead a seminar on conflict resolution
for women radio hosts from Bosnia. Days before the seminar began, I told NOW President
Patricia Ireland I might regret it if I didn't attend. She strongly encouraged
me to cover it for NOW's national newspaper."
Center
for Women War Victims
"The Center for Women War
Victims (CWWV) has been active since December 1992 as a local non-governmental,
feminist organization that works with women regardless of their nationality, age,
status, or sexual orientation. CWWV began in response to the many needs of women
refugees and displaced women in the Zagreb region, escaping from the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia. Our aims were to empower and educate women through individual and
group work, to improve their physical and psychological well-being, and to help
women deal with trauma and difficulty."
Charlotte
Lindsey: Women and War
"Women have tended to
be classified within a single category "women and children", and as "vulnerable".
Yet women are not necessarily vulnerable and certainly have needs, experiences
and roles in war that differ from those of children (although it must be stated
that in many conflicts children are coerced into taking on adult roles). Women
are actively engaging in many armed conflicts around the world and have played
a part in wars throughout history."
U.N.
holds first session on women in war zones
"UNITED
NATIONS (CNN) -- While the U.N. Security Council has passed resolutions on civilians
and children in armed conflict, it has never focused exclusively on the impact
of war on women and girls who, in some cases, have been abused by so-called peacekeepers".
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh:
WOMEN AND WAR IN TAJIKISTAN
"In sharp contrast
to the photographs of smiling women in factories on the cover of past Tajik newspapers,
the new images recount grief, exile and change for women and their children: the
particularly haunting picture of a crying woman; a photo of children playing in
the rubble under the headline "What to do with children, when the grown-ups play
at war"[2]; an image of a kneeling woman in black and white silk national dress
(Atlas), pouring water from a basin over a screeching baby in a refugee camp in
Afghanistan; [3] old women tagging along with their husbands, carrying bundles
of all their material belongings, waiting at a railway station ..."
Thomas
Buck: WOMEN. WAR, AND DISPLACEMENT IN GEORGIA
"Women
were particularly affected by the violence and displacement. As in Bosnia, Guatemala,
and other recent conflicts throughout the world, a majority of Georgia’s internally
displaced people (IDPs) were women and children. Much of the violence experienced
by the civilian populations was in fact aimed at women. This paper assesses the
situation of women during the Georgian conflicts and in the postconflict environment.
While permanent peace agreements have yet to be negotiated in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, the various Georgian war zones have been largely free of large-scale
conflict, with the exception of a May 1998 flare up in the Gali region of Abkhazia.
The political and economic environments in Georgia have also improved since the
wars ended. In spite of the relative calm, IDPs and in particular internally displaced
women (IDW) continue to live in miserable, unsustainable conditions, unable to
return to their homes and largely unwilling or unable to integrate into the Georgian
regions to which they relocated. In this difficult atmosphere for displaced communities,
women’s organizations have emerged as important actors in assessing and addressing
the various needs of IDP communities."
Botev,
Nikolai: Seeing Past the Barricades: Ethnic Intermarriage in Yugoslavia During
the Last Three Decades
"Ethnic intermarriage
has been a frequent focus of social research for several decades, bringing together
scholars with backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, demography, and economics.
Especially productive has been the sociological treatment of intermarriage in
the context of understanding intergroup relations. The basic assumption underlining
this line of research is that intermarriage is both the main indicator of, and
a principal factor in, assimilation and acculturation (e.g. Merton 1941 [1972];
Blau et al. 1982, 1984; Labov and Jacobs 1986; Pagnini and Morgan 1990). While
there is still no comprehensive bibliographic review of the literature on this
subject, there are a few partial reviews limited in either in cultural scope or
in the period they cover (e.g., Barron 1972 [1951]; Shepard and Jeffery 1982;
Cottrell 1990)."
Alexsandar
Boskovic: Virtual Places Imagined Boundaries and Hyperreality in
Southeastern
Europe
"It is quite often remarked that the construction
of ethnic or cultural boundaries is arbitrary. This arbitrariness is not open
to debate. As a matter of fact, contemporary anthropologists regard the concept
of a "nation" as something similar to the concept of "race" - namely, it is a
concept with which some people do operate, but "in reality," it has no "objective"
meaning. This, of course, does not invalidate the fact that people do act based
on their presuppositions and preconceptions which include ideas derived from this
concept. Thus, even something that does not exist "in reality" can produce very
serious and real consequences."
Alexander
Boskovic: Hyperreal Serbia
"The refusal of the
ruling party to recognize the results of the November 1996 municipal elections
and the mass protests that arouse as a consequence of it, have propelled Serbia
into the spotlight of world media attention. Until recently, the only media images
that Serbs could expect to get were the ones of bloodthirsty war criminals, since
an overwhelming majority of them wholeheartedly supported savage wars (by the
Serbs and in the name of Serbs) that raged on the territory of the former Yugoslavia
between 1991 and 1995. However, there is obviously more to Serbia than meets the
eye of the media."
Jean
Baudrillard: No Reprieve For Sarajevo
"What was
remarkable in the simultaneous Strasbourg-Sarajevo Art television broadcast, titled
"le Couloir pour la parole" (a corridor for free speech), on December 19 (1993)
was the absolute status, the extraordinary superiority conferred by misery, distress,
and total delusion. The very features which enabled the inhabitants of Sarajevo
to treat the "Europeans" with contempt, or at least with a sarcastic feeling of
freedom that contrasted sharply with the remorse and the hypocritical regrets
of their counterparts. They were not in need of compassion, they were in fact
the ones to take pity on our dejected condition. "I spit on Europe", one of them
was heard saying. No one indeed can be more free, more sovereign in a rightful
contempt, directed not so much at the enemy than at those whose good conscience
balks in the sun of so-called solidarity. And God knows that they have seen lines
of those people pass by. Lastly it was Susan Sontag who came to have "Waiting
for Godot" played in Sarajevo. Why not bring "Bouvard & Pecuchet" to Somalia or
Afghanistan? But the worse is not about this cultural soul-boosting. It is about
the condescending manner in making out what is strength & what is weakness. They
are strong. It is us who are weak and who go there to make good for our loss of
strength and sense of reality."
Brian
Bennett: Ideological Accommodation and Reconciliation in a Croatian
Community
"The world has watched with horror while post-World War Two Yugoslav federalism,
rationalized and reinforced with Marxist ideology and the political/philosophical
debates creating and critiquing that federal political economy, has collapsed
through ethnic strife, confrontation, declarations of independence, and finally
the terrible chaos, destruction and death of war. With ethnic nationalism, hegemony
and war destroying the federal Marxist socialist experiment, one realizes that
this recent federalism and ideology was only an illusion of political unity built
upon an historically inappropriate union of ethnic and religious identities following
World War One. Ethnic hatred and irredentism created and manipulated by illegitimate
and irresponsible political leadership and the rapidity of events leading to war
came as a shock to me."
Martina
B. og Rachel W.: Interim Report IV--September 1994 to February 1995
"Croatia is neither in peace nor in war. The county is generally struggling
with all the problems common to countries with an economy in "transition" (eg.
privatization, unemployment, changing value systems and beliefs, decline of health
care system, educational system). At the same time the consequences of war are
visible and also invisible: the economy is malfunctioning, parts of the country
suffered heavy destruction, parts are not under governmental control, the rise
of nationalism and right-wing tendencies in society is noticeable."
Eva
Huseby-Darvas: Women & Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, by Barbara
Jancar-Webster
"I have a confession to make. It was impossible for me
in 1992 to read the work presently under review fairly, within its own time frame
of 1941-1945. Regardless of how I struggled to focus, I kept thinking about the
refugees from the former Yugoslavia with whom I worked in Southern Hungary, in
the camp at Nagyatad, earlier this year. I kept thinking about the good friends
and colleagues and about the tragedy of their country in which I traveled much
and dearly love. And, in spite of my effort to concentrate, I kept thinking of
the colleague who, instead of reading her paper about the women's movement in
Yugoslavia at a conference we were attending, in tears talked about the grotesque
futility of description and analysis while blood is flowing amid madness."
Eva
Huseby-Darvas: Voices of Plight, Voices of Paradox: Narratives of Women: Refugees
from the Balkans and the Hungarian Host Population
"The
women's stories emphasize the trauma of their recent experiences. They talk about
how much they long to return home and rebuild their lives there. And they often
talk about how the possibility of going back home is diminishing. Some of the
women, like Ilona who was quoted above, also talk about how they wish for a chance
to build a viable new existence either in Hungary or further in the West. Yet
for most refugees there is no encouragement for permanent resettlement either
in Hungary or elsewhere."
Eva
Huseby-Darvas: Introduction to Special Issue: Refugee Women of the Balkans
"The present volume, the second special issue of the
East European Anthropology Review3, is comprised of some of revised working papers
of the first half of that session.4 The papers focus on refugee women, who constitute
a particularly endangered and rapidly growing population amid the current, post-socialist
Völkerwanderung in Europe. The topic was a crucial one since the late 1980s, and
unfortunately, it continues to be both critical and timely in general and for
anthropologists to consider in particular. According to the United Nations' High
Commission on Refugees, amid the present day refugee crisis in Europe, which is
the largest demographic transition there since the period that immediately followed
the Second World War, approximately 70-75 percent of the refugees are women and
their minor dependents."
Lida
Hujc: I Hope You're Enjoying Your Party': MTV in Wartorn Bosnia
"The
concern of this paper is to explain why good intentions can sometimes be misread.
After four years of war reports from the front-line, the main signifiers of the
Bosnian tragedy became precisely 'grey' or 'red'. Sights of death and destruction
formed popular sentiment towards the crisis. In an article in the 'Guardian' in
January 1996 about how media reporting had distorted British teenagers' views
of the conflict, this was a typical comment: 'Their clothes...are probably from
corpses or from charities' and 'most people live in small shacks made from scraps
of metal and other things they can find'. The reaction to this attitude was summed
up in the words of a girl from Sarajevo: 'They're just showing that we are so
poor and pitiful, and they are so good. They don't need to tell us that they are
sorry, and that we are living in a war. We know everything about us. They need
to tell us what's happening in the world and about their lives.'"
Lepa Mladjenovic
og Donna M. Hughes: Feminist Resistance to War and Violence in Serbia
"This paper will describe the conditions and factors
influencing women’s lives in Serbia, and the ways women have organized to resist
state and interpersonal violence and assist one another. To resist nationalism,
sexism, and war feminists founded anti-war organizations and crisis lines, counseling
centers, and shelters for women and children. With activism and civil disobedience
they have transformed women’s desperation and anger into action. In Belgrade,
Serbia since 1990, feminists have created the SOS Telephone, Women’s Lobby, Women’s
Parliament, Women in Black, the Women’s Studies Research and Communication Center;
the Autonomous Women’s Center Against Sexual Violence, the Center for Girls, two
Women’s Houses (shelters for battered women), a feminist publishing house, called
"1994," the Incest Trauma Center, the Counseling Center for Women, two houses
for single women refugees from Krajina, called "Lastavica," which means The Swallow,
"Women on Work," an organization that supports women’s enterprise initiatives,
"Out of the Circle," a organization that supports women with disabilities and
their families, and "Bibija," the Roma Women’s Center."
Donna M. Hughes, Lepa
Mladjenovic og Zorica Mrsevic: Feminist Resistance in
Serbia
"In the last four years the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia has broken apart. Driven by nationalism, the wars in Slovenia, Croatia
and Bosnia have killed an estimated 300,000 people, wounded another 1,500,000
and forced 4,500,000 people to become refugees. While the world sees daily reports
of Serbian aggression and nationalist extremism, feminists in Serbia have been
protesting all acts of aggression and supporting the victims of violence, including
that advocated by their own government."
Donna
M. Hughes og Lepa Mladjenovic: Feminist Organizing in Belgrade, Serbia: 1990 -
1994.
""The campaign of genocide in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, initiated by the Serbian regime, moved the women in Belgrade
to confront women’s human rights violations on all levels, in their neighborhood
and in neighboring states. An energetic, committed group of feminists have created
a flourishing women’s movement in the hostile conditions of nationalism, militarism,
and poverty. This article will examine a number of the organziations formed from
1990 through 1994."
Sonja
Kalapos: The Young and a Society: An Example from Zagreb
"Locating
young people in a society, whether as individuals or a social group, seems to
be a constantly current issue. The paper shows what do the young people think
of their role in contemporary Croatian society, why they do or do not take part
in political and other forms of public life, and whether they think their contributions
to society count at all. The youth in the one-party system of former Yugoslavia
were politically inactive, because there was no choice offered to young people,
besides being either pro or contra; on the other hand, the youth in multi-party
Croatian society are politically and socially more active because they are faced
with a multi-party, democratic system."
Karl
Kaser: Historical Myth and the Invention of Political Folklore in Contemporary
Serbia
"The year of 1989 was a significant
marker in Serbian contemporary history. The early summer of that year was a time
of dramatic political transition in the then Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia
reflecting trends throughout Eastern Europe as a result of the disappearance of
the USSR as a political entity. The constituent Serbian Republic under the leadership
of its communist president, Slobodan Miloševic, and his communist Party associates
wanted at this time of transition to consolidate their grip on power. They saw
their way to do this by asserting Serbian nationalism at a time of the disintegration
of the existing communist state. The symbolism inherent in this 600th anniversary
celebration became a useful political tool. This was in consonance with trends
throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In this part of Europe
individual nationalisms, drawing their strengths from the past, replaced discredited
and failed communist ideologies of universalism and future oriented achievements."
B. Kirigin og
J. Burmuz: The Adriatic Islands Project: Past - Present -Future
"Who
knows when so many archaeologists will ever visit Brac again? During the 1998
WAC conference during May. I anticipate that there may be as many as one archaeologist
for every square kilometre of the island (3 94 6km2). Yet it is a worrying thought
that when everyone leaves, the island will have no archaeologist at all. This
situation is despite the fact that there are more than 600 known archaeological
monuments on Brac as well as a museum on the island which does not possess a keeper.
The same observation can, sadly, be made for many of the nearby islands - Solta,
Hvar and Vis. The tragedy of such an observation lies in the fact that the lack
of adequate archaeological supervision of the cultural heritage has been associated
with the rapid destruction of significant aspects of the heritage over a period
when this area became one of the principal tourist destinations in Europe. Over
the last ten years, however the area has been the focus of the Adriatic Island
Project. This project is an international team which, between 1988 and 1996 has
registered more than 2000 archaeological sites within a transect of islands stretching
from Brac, opposite the mainland, to Palagruza situated in the centre of the Adriatic.
Numerically, the result of this work is that the density of recorded archaeological
sites is greater here than for virtually any other region in Dalmatia or Croatia
as a whole."
Julie
Hemment: Colonization or Liberation: The Paradox of NGOs in Postsocialist
States
"The stimulation of civil society has
been central to the efforts to democratize post-socialist states and has been
regarded as a crucial dimension of transition. However, recently criticisms have
been made from both East and West. Some of those who were once most in favor of
the notion of civil society and its promotion in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union have become disaffected with the emergent structures, while others
question why concepts and terms are exported with such enthusiasm at a time when
their salience is challenged in Western countries (Carothers 1996). Even George
Soros, the high priest of the "open society" has distanced himself from
some of the processes that are underway in Eastern Europe today (Soros 1997)."
Robert
Hayden: The Triumph of Chauvinistic Nationalisms in Yugoslavia: Bleak
Implications
for Anthropology
"While nineteenth century anthropology
often served as handmaid to colonialism, the dominant intellectual trends in the
field in the present century, and particularly since the second world war, have
largely been antithetical to colonialism and imperialism and hostile to the myths
of racial or cultural superiority used to justify them. Although these trends
may appear to some to be evidence of the "humanistic" orientation of
modern anthropology, the humanism was explicitly grounded in "science."
Thus, the founder of modern American anthropology, Franz Boas, was so empirically
oriented as to appear atheoretical. Yet Boas' works were always based on and illustrative
of the postulates that race, language and culture are not related mechanically,
and particularly that "race" or biology does not determine the specific
content of either language or culture (Boas 1940). Boas' pronounced opposition
to fascism, and his more popularly oriented writings (e.g. Boas 1945) make this
theoretical position clear. With this in mind, it can be seen that Boasian historical
particularism served to invert the previously dominant relationship of anthropological
"science" to imperialism and colonialism. If races and cultures cannot
be ranked as inherently superior or inferior, all justifications for colonialism
and imperialism disappear except for arguments based on rights derived from conquest,
or simply force."
"Vesa
Kurkela: Producing Oriental: A Perspective on the Aesthetics of Lower Arts in
the Eastern Balkans
"This paper can be seen as
a reaction against the scornful attitude some Bulgarian and Romanian colleagues
seem to have towards new local popular musics. Very often local 'ethnopop' is
regarded as a valueless kitsch, which is not worth studying. These "lower
musical arts", however, have their own aesthetics, which are especially interesting
when trying to understand the myths of popular culture. This paper discusses mainly
the oriental style played by Gipsy musicians, which seems to be the most underestimated
genre of local ethnopop music."
P.
Leach: Adriatic Islands Project: The Excavation Sample
"A
peep through the excavation "keyhole", more often than not, opens up
far wider vistas; a prospect anticipated by its otherwise necessarily limited
and very selective deployment within so wide-ranging a project. Excavation at
the "keyhole" scale; designed to provide detailed environmental, chronological
and cultural sequences for key sites, also provides some index of the quality
and potential of data for preservation or future research. Sites sampled by the
Project ranged chronologically from the Middle Neolithic (7th-6th millenium BC)
to the Late Roman (5th-6th centuries AD), and neourgaphically across the main
islands of the survey transect."
Claire
Levy: From Madonna to Lepa Brena to Saska Vaseva: Global and Local Aspects of
Folkpop in Bulgarian Region
"Three female popstars
- one mega star, one Balkan star, and one local, Bulgarian star - will be compared
as images and sounds in order to be illustrated the question of how globality
and locality go side by side together, or better, interact each other in the field
of the so-called folkpop which over the last years enjoy growing popularity among
some circles in Bulgarian region."
Igor
Markovic: Tactical Media as a Tool for Survival in the War Zone
"Globalization
as an obvious process of today can be interpreted in different ways. In this short
piece I would like to deal with a part of it exposed in a computers and digital
communication in general based primary on the use of electronic networks in the
war zone of Balkans, with a few references to the Zapatistas use of the same source,
and some examples from the Sri Lankan cyberspace."
Zorica Mrsevic og Donna
Hughes: Violence Against Women in Belgrade, Serbia:
SOS Hotline 1991 - 1993
"At the beginning of the decade women in Belgrade founded
an SOS Hotline to meet the needs of women and children victims of violence who
were ignored by institutions and official organizations. Their goal was to assist
individual women and raise the consciousness of a city about violence against
women and children. This paper will report the findings of research on violence
against women conducted by the staff at the SOS Hotline for Women and Children
Victims of Violence in Belgrade."
Lepa
Mladjenovic og Slavica Stojanovic: Working in the War Time: Between Feminist
Politics and Humanitarian Work
"Autonomous Women's
Center Against Sexual Violence is a feminist, multiactive, non-hierarchical, professional/volunteer,
non-governmental organization. It was the first center in Belgrade and in the
country with an aim to provide professional and women's support and trust for
women who have survived sexual violence in war, at home, on the street, and in
the work place. The Center opened on December 10th, 1993. The preparation work
started a year before, in December 1992 through the volunteers in the Group for
Women Raped in War. The Group for Women Raped in War and the Autonomous Women's
Center were founded and developed by women from the SOS Hotline for Women and
Children Victims of Violence in Belgrade. The Center is open six days a week and
on Sundays specific meetings take place."
Robert
Gary Minnich: Reflections on the Violent Death of a Multi-Ethnic State: A
Slovene Perspective
"Along with others I agonize
over the fate of family and friends in Yugoslavia, despair over the demise of
a once commendable experiment in multi-ethnic statehood, and grieve the destruction
and loss of life. I think especially of inter-ethnic marriages and their issue,
of ethnically mixed communities and regions, and of that generation of people
which identified itself as "Yugoslav." Still, on reflection, we must
recognize that a great deal was done in socialist Yugoslavia to constrain the
virulent outbreak of what Clifford Geertz (1963) succinctly called "primordial
sentiments." Civil society attained a firm footing in this short-lived federation
of many peoples. These several considerations challenge us as anthropologists
to lay bare the malicious stereotype of "the Balkans" used by nationalist
demagogues (and mimicked by journalists) to substantiate the bloody reality of
ethnically inspired terror and war."
Maria
B. Olujic: Women, Rape, and War: The Continued Trauma of Refugees and
Displaced
Persons in Croatia
"Rape has been used as a tactic
of terror in many wars (Brownmiller 1975, Bergman 1974). Rape was a weapon of
terror as the German Hun marched through Belgium in World War I; gang rape was
part of the orchestrated riots of Kristallnacht which marked the beginning of
Nazi campaigns against the Jews. It was a weapon of revenge as the Russian Army
marched to Berlin in World War II, it was used when the Japanese raped Chinese
women in the city of Nanking, when the Pakistani Army battled Bangladesh, and
when the American G. I.'s made rape in Vietnam a "standard operating procedure
aimed at terrorizing the population into submission" (Bergman 1974: 69).
But in these wars, rape did not receive the widespread publicity it has in the
on-going war in former Yugoslavia."
Mirjana
Prosic-Dvornic: Enough! Student Protest '92: The Youth of Belgrade in Quest of
Another Serbia
"June 1992, was a culmination
of tumultuous political times resulting from the crisis of the disintegration
of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This involved Serbia's
struggling for a civil society with peace, freedom, tolerance and justice. This
is in place of a nationalistic revival, with "homogenization" and authoritarian
rule. At the same time internal wars rage and sanctions threaten ghettoization.
The Student Protest seeking a radical turn in this government policy burst out
at the University of Belgrade. Its first phase, permanent protests of tens of
thousands of students in schools and streets lasted for 26 days. During that time
many new forms of civil disobedience and protesting were introduced giving these
techniques an entirely new meaning. Although none of the students' demands were
met, their movement may be considered successful because they allowed, at least
for a while, another Serbia to come to life. They enabled themselves and the rest
of the opposition of public-minded citizens to express their concerns, frustrations,
hopes and ideas. This paper aims at presenting the ethnography of those wonderful
days of freedom in an otherwise gloomy and pessimistic Belgrade. Data presented
result from my own intensive fieldwork and continual participant observation and
talks with students. In addition, daily newspapers and weekly magazines, and the
student press were carefully studied, and visual media coverage was also noted."
Damir
Pilic: Trade with Abortions
"The opposite and
contradictory answers obtained by two Feral's collaborators within the space of
several hours clearly reflect the situation in the Gynecological department of
the Clinical Hospital Split. Even after several days of systematic research, Feral's
reporters couldn't get a clear and definite reply to the question whether abortions
are performed in this Split hospital."
Maja
Povrzanovic: Ethnography of War: Croatia 1991-92
"Edward
Said once claimed "... there is no discipline, no structure of knowledge,
no institution or epistemology that can or has ever stood free of the various
socio-cultural, historical, and political formations that give epochs their peculiar
individuality (Said 1989:211)." Today, many theoretical and discursive revaluations
of "the hopelessly overlapping, impossibly over-interpreted and conflicted
anthropological site" attack ethnographic authority. Whether responses are
"aesthetic" or "reductively pragmatic," as Said put it, the
problem of reconciling the claims of ideology and desire with the needs of theory
and observation, underlies the very grounds of all our efforts. In this article
I focus on this problem using the example of my actual research on coping with
fear in a war situation, that of Croatia in 1991-1992."
Maja
Povrzanovic: Practice and Discourse About Practice: Returning Home to the
Croatian Danube Basin
"When
Croatia gained European Union recognition in early 1992, a United Nations-brokered
cease-fire was in place which left one third of the Republic not under the control
of the Croatian government. At the same time, more than 15% of Croatian citizens
(approximately 700,000 people) were registered as displaced persons (cf. Rebic
1995:16). In this paper I focus on the situation in the Croatian Danube basin
(encompassing Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem) which is the border
region to Serbia, in late 1997. It remained a United Nations Protected Area until
January 15, 1998, when it was reintegrated into Croatia under the terms of the
Erdut agreement (signed on November 12, 1995)."
Mirjana
Prosic-Dvornic: The Topsy Turvy Days Were There Again: Student and Civil
Protest in Belgrade and Serbia, 1996/1997
"After
a long silence, university students, and hundreds of thousands of citizens, were
on the streets again, protesting against the regime in Serbia. The immediate motive
for the outburst of long suppressed discontent was the regime’s insolent
annulment of the victory of the opposition in November 1996 local elections. In
terms of duration (from November 1996 until March 1997), spread (throughout urban
Serbia) and number of participants (estimated to 350,000 to 550.000), this protest
was unprecedented. However, like all previous demonstrations, it failed to initiate
any real, irrevocable change. Instead, the regime succeeded to channel citizens’
discontent into "safety vents", into temporary "topsy turvy"
days of "Another Serbia", thus enabling once again the continuity and
stability of the regime’s particular vision of society."
Vaska
Tumir: Techno-activism and Post-nationalism: Webs of Resistance Across
ex-Yugoaslavia
"Why did the civic protests in one of the states of ex-Yugoslavia
become a world media event in the winter of 1996/7? Seemingly banal by its deceptive
transparency, the question straddles the intersection of a number of major post
Cold-War political and cultural developments."
Marian
Wenzel: Bosnia and Herzegovina: Danger Through Social Readjustment to
Cultural
Property which has Survived War
"Bosnia-Herzegovina
has progressed two years since the Signing of the Dayton Peace Accord in November
1995, and the Cessation of major hostilities. The Dayton Peace Accord's Annex
8 concerns the cultural heritage, and allows many interested parties to assume
that Bosnia's cultural heritage is now in caring hands. This is not so, and Bosnia's
cultural heritage at this very moment is in the control of parties that are not
just antipathetic, but in many cases, actively dangerous to its continued existence.
This is a shocking situation which has developed for a number of reasons."
Antonia
Young: Film Review: We Are All Neighbors
"What
is especially valuable in all these films is that they have been made over a much
longer period of time than any news reports which we may see, and we are therefore
able to get much closer to the roots of the problems than through the daily depictions
of the destruction in the aftermath of bombing and firing or the resulting tragic
plight of refugees with which we have become all too familiar. Here we watch the
gradual development of distrust between people who never considered their differences
of any importance, and the disastrous effects that outside pressures can play
in the deterioration of human interactions."
Marko
Zlomislic: Sophocles in Sarajevo
"Here unbeliever
here in the land where young ones never grow old
You have reached our noble
hell on earth. Look
Sarajevo, bloodsoaked now, majestic during one winter
of propaganda
when the nations gathered together.
The cellist, his music
rising above the markers
stopped, hovering over the prayers
and followed
the alley ways deepening with rubble."
Janez
Strehovec: The Web as an Instrument of Power and a Realm of Freedom
"The
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 underscored the completely transient nature of
territories; ever since then, walls and tanks standing riveted in place no longer
represent limitations to movement, nor do they symbolize unassailable fortresses
of power. In addition, the events of November 89 - a date that can be read as
the symbolic inversion of May 68 - occurred in the same year that saw the introduction
of the fascinating technology of virtual reality. This particular development
was soon followed by greater accessibility to the global web of communications
(primarily the internet) and the emergence of a new sensibility which introduced
techno as a new lifestyle and a new sociability in the form of raves and manifestations
in the form of parades."
Branca
Sulc: The Destruction of Cultural Property in War
"Croatia
as a country of cultural cross-roads is marked by four distinct geographic and
cultural entities: the Alps, the Adriatic, the Pannonian lowlands and the Balkans.
Being a country of cultural cross-roads, for centuries Croatia has been uniting
and assimilating apparently widely diverse cultural phenomena and, at the same
time, radiating creative individuality. The cultural and historical diversity
and wealth of the cultural heritage in Croatia is of exceptional importance in
spite of the devastation suffered in the recent war, especially because of the
continuity of the numerous cultures in this region and their links with other
Central European cultural circles."
Stancic,
Dr Zoran, Tomaz Podobnikar and Kristof Ostir-Sedej: Database Managemen: Systems
and GIS: Effective Tools for Cultural Resource Management or Big Boys Toys?"
"The last twenty years have been marked by the rapid
development of information technology. While in the early seventies it was only
available to a limited number of specialists, today it has become an integral
part of the everyday life. Development of the information technology has changed
archaeology as well. Unfortunately it seems that many research teams and universities
have been much more willing to accept and integrate information sciences into
their work than cultural resource managers. This is especially worrying as the
pressure on cultural and natural resources is."
Andrei
Simic: First and Last Yugoslavia: Some Thoughts on the Dissolution of a State
"Probably very few of us who have spent our academic
careers studying Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia were entirely prepared for the
violence of the present crisis or the intensity of the interethnic hatred which
has resurfaced after more than forty years of relative quiescence. It is equally
certain that each of us holds a distinct view of these events, a view dependent
to a large extent on our individual background and experience. For this reason
I feel obliged to introduce this discussion reflexively in order to place my comments
in their proper context. The essential facts can be stated very succinctly. I
consider myself a Serbian-American, and, although I have carried out ethnographic
field work among Croats (on the islands of Rab and Krk, near the port of Rijeka,
and in California), the majority of my research has been among Serbs both in Yugoslavia
and America (field research in Yugoslavia was on seven occasions between 1966
and 1968, and focused largely on problems related to modernization and urbanization)."
Janet
Reineck: Seizing the Past, Forging the Present: Changing Visions of Self and Nation
Among the Kosovo Albanians
"August, 1992. I have
just received a letter from Nuria, an Albanian friend in Kosova. She writes from
her village just north of Prishtina. Like most of her friends, Nuria was raised
in a conservative Moslem family, was engaged and married to a man she had never
met, and lives now with her husband and children in her husband's extended family.
Having been denied, by her father, an education beyond primary school, she cultivated
her mind and nourished her imagination by reading novels and poetry in secret,
hiding them under her embroideries and needlepoint. Her frequent letters tell
of the landscapes around her, of the color and texture of the seasons, of the
feelings these evoke in her. They also convey her reaction to the hardship and
desperation which has engulfed her world. This is her letter:"
Jonathan
Schwartz: Macedonia: A Country in Quotation Marks
"Two
members of the British Relief Fund, Edith Durham (1905) and Henry Brailsford (1906),
published their travel memoires soon after their services in the field were completed.
Both books concentrated on regions of Macedonia which had been active in the Ilinden
Uprising of August 1903, and which met with especially harsh reprisals from the
Ottoman Turkish forces. The scenario is grimly familiar in 1992: burned villages,
desperate refugees, and capricious executions. Brailsford's work centers on the
towns of Florina (Lerin) and Kastoria (Kostur) in northern Greece (Aegean Macedonia).
Durham's work is of particular interest for this present essay, because her base
was Resen and its surrounding villages near Prespa Lake."
B. Diklic: Archaeological
Park: 'Mvrsa in situ'
"By choosing this project,
planners and architects, archeologists and historians, town municipality and inhabitants
of Osijek (the jury) show their attitude upon the "problem" of the cultural
heritage and its participation in everyday life of the town. They have recognized
the unique approach of this project - bipolar function of the square. On one hand
it is a central town's open space and on the other it is an archeological park.
Archeological heritage defines forecoming urban changes and together with recent
urban needs they create a new identity of the Town on the beginning of the third
millennium."
Bette
Denich: Unmaking Multi-Ethnicity in Yugoslavia: Metamorphosis Observed
"In late September 1989, the Central Committee of the
Communist League of Yugoslavia held a special meeting to discuss a proposed amendment
to the Slovenian constitution that would claim the right for that republic to
secede from Yugoslavia. The following morning, when I turned on the radio in my
Belgrade apartment, I found myself listening to the sounds of the roll-call vote
being taken to conclude what had been an all-night session. The majority of the
Central Committee voted to request the Slovenian parlyament to postpone its vote
to allow for further discussion. But later that same morning, the Slovenian parliament
disregarded the Central Committee's request, and voted unanimously in favor of
Slovenia's right to secede (cf. Hayden 199O). Upon hearing the news of the vote
in the Slovenian parliament, I wrote in my notebook: "Today ended the Communist
Party of Yugoslavia," meaning that it had lost tits Leninist authority to
enforce top- down decisions over what had been subordinate bodies. I then spread
out a map of Yugoslavia and, after studying it for about five minutes, saw clearly
that secession by Slovenia would mean the disintegration of the rest of the country."
Eleanor
Despalatovic: Reflections on Croatia, 1960-1992
"I
am a historian who has worked in the field of Croatian and Yugoslav history since
the late 1950's. My first book Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement, described
the development of Croatian and Yugoslav nationalism in the first half of the
nineteenth century. I followed this with a series of articles on the spread of
nationalism from the Croatian political and cultural elite to the peasantry in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rise of the Croatian Peasant
Party, and the life and thought of Ante Radic, the Party ideologist. These led
me to my present topic, one which has occupied me for almost 15 years, namely
the economic, social and political life of the peasantry in Croatia before World
War I, the period in which the Peasant Party was founded. I am now completing
work on the first volume of a history of the Croatian peasants from 1880 to 1914.
It focuses on everyday peasant life, and is based, primarily, on ethnographic
sources. The second volume will analyze the interaction between the modernizing
programs of the Croatian urban elite and traditional peasant culture during the
same period. My interests overlap with those of anthropologists and ethnologists,
and I have collaborated on several projects with Joel M. Halpern: an English edition
of Rudolf Bicanic's How the People Live, and a study of the Balkan travels of
Emily Balch, author of Our Slavic Fellow Citizens."
S. Cace, S. Forenbaher
og V. Gaffney: Cultural Resource Management Issues in the
Adriatic Islands
Projects
"Despite
the recent problems in Eastern Europe, many regions are beginning to anticipate
reconstruction. The region of Dalmatia (Croatia) is one such area. Dalmatia, formerly
one of the most popular tourist resorts in Europe, has suffered severe environmental
and economic damage. The Adriatic, and the Dalmatian karst, in particular, are
fragile environments and demand careful monitoring. In the past, this occurred
via local development Plans (Carter 1990a)."
Tone
Bringa: Nationality Categories, National Identification and Identity Formation
in'Multinational' Bosnia
"Many Sarajevan intellectuals
despaired at the European diplomats and politicians obvious ignorance of Bosnia
and Hercegovina's unique ethnic composition and their disregard for her history.
Cantonization is a political and ideological compromise for those areas which
are a patchwork of different ethnic groups co-existing side by side without relinquishing
the basic principle of self-determination and nationalism. Historically, cantonization
as a project can be traced back to the Wilsonian doctrine, used to create national
states after the fall of the imperial multi-ethnic states (Ottoman, Russian and
Habsburg) in 1917-19. Its aim was to divide Europe into ethno-linguistic territorial
states (cf. Hobsbawm, 1992), with the right to self-determination and the principle
of "one state, one nation and one nation, one state" a plan which then
as now was "a project as dangerous as it was impracticable, except at the
cost of forcible mass expulsion, coercion and genocide which was subsequently
paid." (Hobsbawm,1992:5)"
Bill
Egbert: A Noble Act of Harmony in the Balkans
"Under
Beslagic's leadership, Tuzla remained the largest free region in Bosnia for the
duration of the war. The militia that staved off the Serb onslaught was itself
20 percent Serb. Beslagic maintained throughout the war that the true enemy besieging
their city was not the Serbs, but the ethnic animosity they represented. He
forbade the persecution of the city's Serb minority, personally checking up on
people like Vojislava Vasiljevic. The elderly Serb woman says that whenever Beslagic
saw her on the street he would stop his car and ask if she was experiencing any
harassment."
Alexis Gosselin:
Barbara Einhorn: Feminism and Post (19th Century) History in Eastern Europe
"Nationalism is sweeping East Central Europe. The civil
war in (former) Yugoslavia, the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, and Hungary and
Romania's territorial quarrels are among recent indicators. These Europeans are
returning, at an accelerating rate, to a nineteenth century patria-centered nationalism.
The Eastern European events are not an isolated phenomenon, for in the West as
well, exclusive nationalisms are sweeping through state after state, as refugee
and immigration laws become increasingly restrictive in this era of economic uncertainty
and attacks on immigrants (who don't "belong") are on the upswing. The
West, however, has an advantage - its economic difficulties are within the framework
of a generally stable economic and political system. East Central Europe does
not have this luxury, and is instead forced to create institutions and ideologies
to fill the political and economic vacuum left behind by the collapse of communism.
The past holds a magnetic appeal once "liberated" from communist interpretation,
and the historic myths of nationalism and self-determination serves as powerful
attractors. Thus, the evident appeal of nationalism: an organic, "native"
institution, which was not invented and imposed by foreigners (as liberalism and
communism often appear). Nationalism offers a sense of belonging, identity and
purpose in an era of uncertainty and upheaval. Nationalism defines who "we"
are, by first determining who we are not."
Alexsandra
Faber og Boris Sevcik: Preservation of Historical City Patterns of Coastal Cities
on the Adriatic
"On the ground of long years
of studies, in the first place of studies of aerial photographs it has become
evident the network of development of coastal towns of Croatia from the prehistory
over Roman period to middle age. J. Bradford,
M. Suic as well as other archaeologists in Croatia, have pointed out to this evidence
(to the author of this paper, A. Faber, the theme about aerial photographs becomes
also doctor's dissertation)."
Gilland
Olsen, Mary K., Sonja Spoljar-Vrzina og Vlasta Rudan: Reclaiming Lives:
Variable
Effects of War and Ethnic Identities in the Narratives of Bosnian and
Croatian
Refugees.
"In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down
and the two Germanys were unified. Throughout Eastern Europe socialism fell to
popular movements which favored democracy. The world looked on with optimism and
expectations for positive change, particularly for greater unity and understanding
among the peoples of Europe. Yet events in the former Yugoslavia had already begun
to move in quite a different direction - towards fragmentation, the resurgence
of nationalism, and war (Denich 1994: see especially 376-7). Fragmentation and
nationalism have become problems throughout Europe and the Central Asian states
of the former Soviet Union, though nowhere quite so tragically as in the Balkans.
These disturbing trends are exacerbated by war and forced migration, creating
a vicious circle where nationalism fuels the flames of war, and war continues
to create homeless people who are, by and large, unwelcome elsewhere, in part
because of their nationalities."
Arlene
K. Fleming: Integrating Cultural Heritage into National Disaster Planning, Mitigation
and Relief
"A workshop, Integrating Cultural
Heritage into National Disaster Planning, Mitigation and Relief, convened in Skopje
and Ohrid, FYR Macedonia, September 13 - 17, 1997. This is the first in a series
of workshops to be held for national representatives in major regions of the world,
with the goal of integrating cultural heritage into disaster planning, mitigation
and relief, world-wide."
V.
P. Gagnon: Ethnic Conflict as Demobilizer: The Case of Serbia
"The
terms ethnic identity and ethnic conflict are increasingly being seen in discussions
of international security, and are often portrayed as inextricably linked, the
one following the other in a kind of natural progression. Indeed, both the primordialist
and instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity seem to agree that appealing to (or
framing) peoples' identities as members of a collective group defined in terms
of ethnicity is a very powerful mobilization strategy. This ethnic mobilization
in turn is said to result in a process of "ethnic outbidding," whereby
competition to attract popular support leads political actors to try appear the
most supportive of ethnic claims, which causes an almost inevitable spiral toward
conflict with other ethnic groups. Donald Horowitz even argues that the only constraint
on this process is the ethnic composition of the electorate.[1] While this is
surely an exaggeration, and in fact outbidding is restrained by other factors,[2]
the implicit assumption is that violent ethnic conflicts can be explained in terms
of this outbidding strategy."
Jelena
Grujic: Female Side of War
"One hundred and fifty
testimonials by women about the war have been collected in the study "Women,
violence and war"; the women are today in different situations, of different
age, different marital status, education and experience. The only common thread
is that all of them are refugees. "The basic idea was to describe the invisible,
female, side of the war. The strongest impression after reading of the study is
that every violent disruption of living (normal state of things) is experienced
as violence. This encompasses both the experiences from the war and those experienced
later as refugees," says Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, one of the authors of
the book which was published by the Institute for criminological research with
financial assistance from the Soros Fund. Her coauthors are Natasa Mrvic-Petrovic,
Slobodanka Konstantinovic-Vilic and Ivana Stevanovic, all three members of the
European movement in Serbia's group for women's rights."
Joel
Martin Halpern: Introduction: War Among the Yugoslavs
"This
issue presents American and West European anthropological perspectives on recent
events prior to the outbreak of war in former Yugoslavia. Included are articles
by anthropologists from Croatia and Serbia which deal directly with the war and
its impact on their respective societies. The first group of essays should be
understood as background to armed struggle involving violent death, destruction,
and bereavement and those tragedies still in the making. The horrors associated
with these events in this Balkan setting are unparalleled in Europe since World
War Two. They do not have precise parallels elsewhere but bring to mind the sufferings
of former communist states. As in late-1970s Cambodia and today in the Caucasus
and Central Asia issues of conflicting national identities have been paramount.
Religious and national conflicts also have parallels in non-communist areas. Events
in Cyprus and Lebanon, in Liberia, Angola, Somalia and the Southern Sudan, as
well as in Sri Lanka and Kashmir, are some examples. In sum, the conflicts in
ex-Yugoslavia are part of a late 20th century world-wide trend. These instances,
although far from identical, involve military conflicts over control of territories
inhabited by conflicting national groups. Such conflicts inflict severe privation
on civilian populations assumed to be part of the arena of conflict. In some cases
creation of a nation state is the proximate cause, in others, as in ex-Yugoslavia,
conflicts occur within and between recognized national entities. This series of
essays, while having important analogues to events elsewhere, is not primarily
intended to be comparative but focuses on the Balkan case."
Mary
K. Gilland Olsen: Bridge on the Sava: Ethnicity in Eastern Croatia, 1981-1991
"The war in the former Yugoslav territories is represented
in popular sources as primarily an ethnic one. Originally it was referred to by
some as a civil war and by others as a war of aggression of one nation or people
(Serbs) against other newly independent countries (first Slovenia, then Croatia
and now Bosnia and Hercegovina). The clash among Serbs, Croats and Muslims is
portrayed as a nationalist revival, a consequence of deep-seated historically-constructed
enmities brewing beneath the surface of forty-five years of relative political
calm. This paper presents a different view. It argues that nationalism and hatred
expressed by members of nationality groups towards members of other such groups
are not revivals but transformations, new expressions of economic and political
competition and discontent. Political leaders and other elites made use of available
cultural symbols associated with nationality or ethnicity in order to gain backing
for political agendas which were not primarily ethnically motivated."
Eric
D. Gordy: Universal Reason' and Local Nationalism
"Sabrina
Ramet is certainly one of the most interesting and controversial scholars of eastern
Europe. She has behind her a wide body of work which ranges from the solidly empirical[1]
to the adventurously speculative.[2] She has taken on areas ranging from politics
and social movements to gender relations and popular music. With such a wide scope,
it is probably inevitable that her work has varied in quality--the exhaustively
researched and carefully argued Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia can be
safely described as a fundamental text for researchers setting out to understand
the shape and direction of political conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, while
her excursion into popular culture Rocking the State[3] demonstrated a dismaying
inattention to detail and a tin ear for aesthetic issues.[4] Ramet's work can
range from dazzlingly detailed to unnervingly vague. But it is never dull."
E.
A. Hammel: The Yugoslav Labyrinth
"In October
of 1991, at the beginning of the Yugoslav Civil War, I had a letter from an old
friend in what we used to call Yugoslavia, indeed from Belgrade itself. It was
a deep and anguished account of the situation there, and it brought me face to
face with issues of legitimacy and morality that I had until then been able to
avoid as a professional ethnographer among my hosts. The conflict affected me
as it has others who have worked in Yugoslavia, tapping deep wellsprings of history
and emotion, and I have tried to understand these as well as the war itself. I
responded to my friend as best I could, and the outgrowth of that reply is this
essay. It has a title now that (presumptuously) calls up the closest historical
analogy I can find, Gerald Brenan's classic on the similar situation in Spain.
The title is peculiarly appropriate. Not only is the Yugoslav reality as twisted
as the tunnels that held the Minotaur, but the observer keeps coming face to face
with himself, seeing his own image spring out from what he thinks are the events
of history, unable to separate projection from observation, fact from reflection,
self from the other. Because this confusion cannot be resolved, I make no apology
for it or for the personalism of the account. There is of course no lack of other
accounts. I should also make clear my conviction that there are no clean hands
in this conflict, there are no guys in white hats. The delicts range from the
trivial to the horrendous, although they differ in their timing. Human frailty
is everywhere evident, and in some quarters greed and savagery reign. In this
essay I first try to lay out my own biases and the limitations of my experience.
Then I try to give an objective account."
Dorothy
Louise Zinn og Annamaria Rivera: NOTES ON A DISPLACED WOMANHOOD: ALBANIAN REFUGEE
WOMEN IN SOUTHERN ITALY
" This paper is the
fruit of a preliminary inquiry into the presence of Albanian refugee women in
Southern Italy. The research is based on participant-observation and interviews
with Albanian couples the adjacent regions of Apulia and Basilicata. While it
is impossible to offer a precise quantification of the Albanian presence, we recall
that in 1991 over 40,000 refugees landed in Italy - some remaining more or less
legally, others deported - and even today, clandestine landings continue on an
almost daily basis. The two research sites were directly involved in the "crisis"
of 1991, and while the refugees were "distributed" throughout Italy, the two regions
presently host Albanians numbering in the thousands. We dealt with Albanian couples
for the simple reason that we did not locate single women to include in the study."
Mary
Kay Gilliland, Sonja Spoljar-Vrzina og Vlasta Rudan: RECLAIMING LIVES: VARIABLE
EFFECTS OF WAR ON GENDER AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES IN THE NARRATIVES OF BOSNIAN AND
CROATIAN REFUGEES
" In 1989, the Berlin Wall
came down and the two Germanys were unified. Throughout Eastern Europe socialism
fell to popular movements which favored democracy. The world looked on with optimism
and expectations for positive change, particularly for greater unity and understanding
among the peoples of Europe. Yet events in the former Yugoslavia had already begun
to move in quite a different direction - towards fragmentation, the resurgence
of nationalism, and war (Denich 1994: see especially 376-7). Fragmentation and
nationalism have become problems throughout Europe and the Central Asian states
of the former Soviet Union, though nowhere quite so tragically as in the Balkans.
These disturbing trends are exacerbated by war and forced migration, creating
a vicious circle where nationalism fuels the flames of war, and war continues
to create homeless people who are, by and large, unwelcome elsewhere, in part
because of their nationalities."
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