Anthropological dimension of ethnic conflicts

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to comprehend ethnic conflicts through their anthropological dimension, especially through Durkheim's differentiation of sacred and profane, as well as their ambivalence. Beside Durkheim himself, the author also bases his analysis on other theorists who more or less share Durkheim's views. Main theoretical framework of analysis is basically an attempt to develop and 'apply' to that end a very inspiring anthropological standpoint of Mary Douglas. Sociological foundations from which the empirical material is extracted and on which the value of the basic hypothesis, as well as the applied notion apparatus, are illustrated and checked, are ethnic conflicts that followed dissolution of the second Yugoslavia. While the author claims neither exhaustiveness nor completeness in the explanation of such a complex phenomena, he limits the objective to verifying the hypothesis that mixture of sacred and profane is one of the causes, and at the same time manifestations, of ethnic conflicts in ethnically and religiously heterogeneous environment, that has, besides, undergone difficult and uncertain process of transformation from socialistic to capitalistic system. In that context, the attention is drawn to inter-entity relations in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as to some of the causes and possible outcomes of sharp polarization in contemporary Serbian politics, which are examined within the very same theoretical framework. .