Serbian Community Research Articles

TYPIFICATI ON AND CORRECTION OF SYNTAXA FROM THE CLASS MOLINIO-ARRHENATHERETEA TX. 1937 IN SERBIA

Abstract A list of corrected and typified grassland communities of the class Molinio-Arrhenatheretea Tx. 1937 occurring in Serbia was provided. The nomenclature rules of the International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature were strictly followed. Syntaxonomic affiliation of communities to higher syntaxa was assessed according to the existing syntaxonomical schemes for Serbia, i.e. according to the position determined by the original source. Higher syntaxa followed the synsystem of the so-called “EuroVegChecklist”. Since syntaxonomic disagreements concerning a certain plant association’s position within the whole classification system have not been discussed, such a list should serve as the starting point for a further revision of the status of grassland communities in Serbia. So far, a total of 87 plant communities of the class Molinio-Arrhenatheretea were described for Serbia. The list provided here will enable more precise and more accurate mapping of vegetation in Serbia, as well as classification of these communities into the Habitat Directive which will enable the establishment of the Red list of Habitats for Serbia.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in a Serbian Community

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop as a serious long-term consequence of traumatic experiences, even many years after trauma exposure. The objectives of this study were to examine the prevalence of lifetime and current PTSD as well as to detect the most stressful life events and sociodemographic risk factors of PTSD in a general adult Serbian population. The sample consisted of 640 subjects chosen by random walk technique in five regions of the country. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview 5 revealed an 18.8% prevalence rate of current PTSD and a 32.3% prevalence rate of lifetime PTSD. According to the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised, the bombardment, being expelled from home, siege, and participation in combat were the stressful events most likely to be associated with PTSD. The prevalence of PTSD increased among widows and widowers, divorced persons, unemployed persons, and retired persons. The high level of PTSD a few years after the trauma exposure classifies as a significant health problem that can cause serious consequences for families and the community as a whole.

Determinants of Fruit, Vegetable, and Dairy Consumption in a Sample of Schoolchildren, Northern Serbia, 2012

IntroductionInsufficient intake of fresh fruits, vegetables, and dairy products among children is a serious nutrition-related concern. The aim of our study was to determine behavioral and environmental factors that influence fruit, vegetable, and dairy consumption among Serbian schoolchildren.MethodsWe used 24-hour recall to measure fruit, vegetable, and dairy intake of schoolchildren (N = 212) aged 8 to 11 years from 2 elementary schools in a local community in Serbia. We evaluated potential determinants of intake by using a 48-item questionnaire that asked about children’s behaviors, perceptions of others’ expectations and behaviors, reinforcement of children’s behaviors, and availability of fruits, vegetables, and dairy at home and school. Children completed written questionnaires during 1 school class under teacher supervision. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze determinants of fruit, vegetable, and dairy intake. ResultsNegative predictors of fruit intake were expectations from teacher and parents (P <.001) to eat fruit and availability of fruit in school. Vegetable intake was positively related to paternal modeling behavior (P <.001) and availability of vegetables at home (P = .04). Dairy intake was positively influenced by parental reinforcement (P = .03). ConclusionVarious personal and environmental factors are associated with children’s intake of fruits, vegetables, and dairy. Interventions to promote fruit, vegetable, and dairy consumption in Serbian schoolchildren should focus on modeling and reinforcement by parents and teachers and increasing availability at school and at home.

Some Socio-Geographic Characteristics of Modern Labor Migration from Serbia and Montenegro to Denmark: Social Life and Social Relations Migrants

This paper discusses some socio-geographical characteristics of contemporary labor migration from Serbia and Montenegro in Denmark, analyzed in terms of social life and social relations of migrants. At the beginning of the sixties, slow economic development of the country (former Yugoslavia), caused the decision of the Serbian and Montenegrin workers to go abroad. Among these countries, it was certainly and Denmark. Serbian and Montenegrin communities of migrants, although not many (about 8,000), is interesting for researchers, because in the middle of Denmark that is economically dependent, maintained their ethnic or social identity. Since the notion of a complex identity, it must be viewing within the more theoretical approach or framework. Therefore, there are two interpretations: one given by the respondents, and other researchers. In this study, on the one hand the most outstanding are moments in the life and character of the Serbian and Montenegrin man in the time immediately preceding the external migration to Denmark and on the other, new life and a different occupational mobility of respondents. Among the latter, include, for example, communication between Serbian and Montenegrin migrants with their homeland through: print media, broadcasting, internet. Important place in the identification of the Serbian and Montenegrin migrants are in the family, relatives, churches, associations and clubs, where they can develop their activities. Thus, forming a social network within the community and are wider environment.

Capacity issues in local communities for integral urban regeneration

The subject of the research in wider sense is organizational-communication capacity of local communities in Serbia in the frame of sustainable development. Along with this, the paper will explore potentialities of Faludi's model of multiplanning agencies as well as Healey's collaborative theory for better efficiency and effectiveness of planning in the process of urban regeneration. Specifically the paper will research relation between organizational structure of local communities in Serbia and their potentialities to provide adequate communication towards integral information for urban regeneration. Research is framed with a problem of efficiency and effectiveness in creating urban regeneration policies, strategies, designs, and technical solutions. The problem will be focused to Serbian context; characterized with inadequate, transitional, system of governance that is moving from centralistic towards decentralist model. This will be further explored through level and type of participation in the process of urban regeneration. The hypothesis of the research explores the nature of the relation between number and types of communication channels, provided by organizational structure of local communities that should enable effectiveness and efficiency of urban regeneration. In other words the hypothesis is: number and types of communication channels (variable A) influences the effectiveness and efficiency of urban planning for sustainable urban regeneration (variable B). The aims of the paper are identification of the regulations between the variables. Expected result is establishing the model for measuring the capacity of local communities for integral urban regeneration.

Serb community in Gnjilane: Nostalgia discourse of the urban enclave

The paper is based on field research carried out among members of the Serb community in the town of Gnjilane in 2006. I first discuss the multi-sited fieldwork, whose goal was to study the relation between ethnicity and other forms of collective identification in the Serb community in southeast Kosovo, in the profoundly changed situation that has existed since 1999. The key concept of this paper - nostalgia - is then established. I go on to discuss the population of Gnjilane as reflected in the census, and the possibility of a census that would reflect the complex social and ethnic situation in Kosovo. I also describe the small urban Serb enclave in Gnjilane in the post-war period. In the radically changed ethnic and social landscape that followed the war, the discourse of members of the small urban enclave about themselves and the other is a kaleidoscope of reflective nostalgia. Looked at “from above”, the perspective of ordinary people, the past takes on a wider spectrum of colours and emotions than the official black and white images - both Serbian and Kosovan - of victims, aggressors and never-ending hatred.

Gender Aspects in the Attitudes of the Students of the University of Novi Sad Towards Multiculturalism

Abstract The objective of this paper is to present the results of a case study conducted at the University of Novi Sad which examined the students’ attitudes toward multiculturalism (particularly in educational processes) with a special focus on the gender aspect, and the intersections with their opinions regarding ethnic tolerance and stereotypes against ethnic communities in Serbia.

In search of a democratic cultural “alternative”: Serbia's European heritage from Dositej Obradović to OTPOR

Developments in Serbia's democratic consolidation over the past six years have been both ongoing and progressive. Yet the establishment of a widely shared and collectively accepted political culture that has departed from the ethnocentric and euroskeptic narratives of the Milošević era remains incomplete. Additionally, the failure by Serbian socio-political elites in appropriating alternative narratives of Serbian history and culture that demonstrate a tradition of shared values and identities with other European communities has stymied public acceptance of Serbia's European integration and public trust among its leaders. This paper argues that Serbian socio-political elites can appropriate narratives and symbols of Serbian collective identity that have been either sidelined or neglected by previously established ethnocentric narratives, and ascribe new systems of meaning and codes of behavior that qualify European liberal democratic values. I argue that a plentiful reservoir of democratic capital can be found in the histories of Serbian communities in Vojvodina over the past three centuries, and the urban cosmopolitanism of Belgrade from the late 1860s up to the present period.

Biography as the Paradigm of Ethnic/National Emancipation

This paper is an attempt to complement the existing body of knowledge about the Montenegrin community in Serbia through the analysis of the life story of one Montenegrin living in a rural environment in Vojvodina. His life story contains all the hallmarks of identity which have been noted in earlier studies of Montenegrin identity, and sheds new light on certain aspects of it.

Financing local communities in Serbia

Modern organisation of the state has to be such that every citizen should be able to influence everyday's political decisions. However, this idealistic goal is difficult to achieve in practice. Therefore, we have to find an adequate system of distributing tasks among different levels of government. This distribution is further complicated by the fact that every task has to be financed by public revenues. This working paper has the goal to show the current system of local communities in Serbia and to show a way how to improve the work of local governments by receiving revenues for their obligations. According to the opinion of the authors, reorganisation of the current system of local governance in Serbia will lead to a more efficient bureaucratic apparatus.

Harnessing Serbian civilian capacity for peace support operations: A nascent community?

The article will explore the possible emergence of a civilian capacity community in Serbia comprised of Serbian policymakers, researchers and practitioners who are interested in peace support operations and willing to deploy Serbian experts through multilateral organizations such as the European Union, United Nations and the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe. Having recently undergone a security sector reform, Serbia can offer to share relevant experience and expertise with these organizations through secondment or direct hire, in order to support the countries experiencing complex crises or those that are emerging from conflict. Serbian expertise can serve to soften some of the criticism leveled against peace support operations and provide relevant expertise to those in the field.

Low wages and high technology: Journalists and journalism in Serbia

This paper discusses major findings of the research project 'Profession at a Crossroads - Journalism at the Threshold of the Information Society' conducted by the Faculty of Political Sciences, Center for Media and Media Research, from July 2010 to June 2011. The aim of the project was to examine social, economic and technological qualities of the journalist community in Serbia and its capacity to respond to challenges the profession is faced with regarding global media changes and domestic transitional processes. Research results indicate that journalism in Serbia is in a state of limbo and caught between delayed transition and the information society, and that it very slowly mobilizes resources to respond to the forthcoming challenges.

Journalism and media industry in Serbia: Challenges and answers

This article provides a general overview and reflects upon major findings of the research project 'Profession at the Crossroads - Journalism at the Threshold of the Information Society'. The two year project was conducted through two consecutive phases: the first phase (2010-2011) focused upon occupational professionalism and the journalistic community in Serbia. Its main goal was to investigate social, economic and technological characteristics of journalists and their capacity to respond to profound challenges posed by global transformations and internal transitional process. Research results indicated a need to broaden the investigation into the institutional aspects of professionalism. Therefore, the focus of the second phase (2011-2012) was on the organizational setting of journalism guided by the main research question: How leading media outlets provide for a working environment to accommodate necessary professional development induced by profound technological challenges. Building upon survey results from the first year, and institutional analysis of the media system, the second year research introduced qualitative methodology. The major data gathering method was semi-structured indepth interview with 30 media owners (for private media outlets) and top mangers (for public or state owned media). The goal was to identify how those outlets negotiate between adaptive needs, elements of the existing structures and resources available to them. A classification scheme was developed to differentiate between media in regard to five indicators: (1) level of technology development (2) available professional recourses (3) economic strength (4) introduction of network journalism and (5) attitude towards the role of the state in the media sector. Although results generated by qualitative methodology can only be regarded as broad generalizations, diversity of outlets analyzed and richness of the interview material allowed to classify media into five basic groups: public broadcasters, state owned printed press, media/technological leaders, media missionaries and survivors with scarce resources. The article concludes that while the state/publicly owned media secure economic position enables them to focus more on quality journalism, private/commercial media are more diverse and innovative in developing business strategies in response to changes in journalism.

Wedding, traditional women’s costume and identity discourses of the Serb community of southeast Kosovo

The paper is based on multi-sited fieldwork carried out in southeast Kosovo (Gnjilane with its surrounding villages and Vitina enclave) and among persons displaced from this area to Smederevo, Vranje, and Vranjska Banja (all towns in Serbia). It is an excerpt from a much more extensive study of relations among ethnicity and other forms of collective identifications (religious, regional, local, gender) in a profoundly changed situation following the introduction of an international protectorate in Kosovo in 1999. The focus is on the subjective dimension of life under the protectorate and local knowledge. The paper examines identity discourses which accompany a wedding, a paradigmatic event in the culture of the Serb population of southeast Kosovo, and the use of traditional women’s costume. The wedding celebration in the morning hours is opened by the mother-inlaw (the bridegroom’s mother), by dancing the svekrvino kolo (mother-in-law’s dance) with her kin. This wedding segment symbolizes the community’s collective identity in the fullest sense. Women put on their traditional costume, of whose appearance and preservation to the present day the community is very proud. Discourse on the preserved traditional women’s costume (today reduced to ritual function) among members of the community expresses the intertwining of different forms of identification. The traditional women’s costume is one of the bearing constructs on which the community bases its identity as the old inhabitants of the area, as distinct from the colonists. Other identities such as ethnic, regional, local, gender and family are also interlaced into the discourse on women’s costume. Why is the women’s costume placed on a pedestal as a condensed symbol of the community? Why does the community read complex identity discourses into the women’s costume and the dance of the women at the wedding? One of the spheres in which this paper seeks answers are gender relations. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027: Multietnicitet, multikulturalnost, migracije - savremeni procesi]

Serbs in Romania relationship between ethnic and religious identity

The paper looks at the role of religion in the ethnic identity of the Serbs in Romania, based on the fieldwork conducted in August 2010 among the Serbian communities in the Danube Gorge (Rom. Clisura Dun?rii; loc. Ser. Banatska klisura), western Romania. A historical perspective being necessary in studying and understanding the complexities of identity structures, the paper offers a brief historical overview of the Serbian community in Romania. Serbs have been living in the Banat since medieval times, their oldest settlements dating back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Today, they mostly live in western Romania (Timi?, Arad, Cara?-Severin and Mehedin?i counties), Timi?oara being their cultural, political and religious centre. Over the last decades, the community has been numerically declining due to strong assimilation processes and demographic trends, as evidenced by successive census data (34,037 in 1977; 29,408 in 1992; 22,518 in 2002). The majority belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church (Diocese of Timi?oara), but a number of neo-Protestant churches have appeared in the last decades. The research focuses on the role of the Orthodox religion among the Serbian minority in Romania and the role of new religious communities in relation to national identity. The role of the dominant Serbian Orthodox Church in preserving and strengthening ethnic identity is looked at, but also influences of other religious traditions which do not overlap with any particular ethnic group, such as neo-Protestantism. With regard to the supranational nature of neo-Protestantism, the aim of the study is to analyze the impact of these new religions on assimilation processes among the Serbs in Romania and to examine in what ways different religious communities influence either the strengthening or the weakening of Serbian ethnic identity.

From Danish Yugoslavs to Danish Serbs: National Affiliation Caught Between Visibility and Invisibility

Immigrants from Serbia who came to Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s found a large number of shared values between Yugoslav ideals of brotherhood and unity and the Scandinavian welfare model. As a result, they felt well integrated into Danish society, almost to the point of being invisible. This invisibility is upheld through a constant emphasis on sameness between themselves and the majority population in the public sphere, while the cultivation of difference has been relegated to the private realm or to cultural associations such as the Yugoslav Clubs. Over the last decade, this ‘sharing of values’ has been contested from several points of view. During their absence, Yugoslav migrants have witnessed the destruction of their homeland and have been forced to take on a new Serbian identity. In what remained of their former homeland, social and political instability has stimulated a re-traditionalisation of society. Meanwhile, the growing attention given to religion and origins has changed the room for manoeuvre of immigrant families in Denmark, challenging the tight networks hitherto maintained with the home village. Through interviews with members of the Serbian community in Denmark, I explore how they manoeuvre between strategies of visibility and invisibility in their quest to become full members of Danish society while maintaining their cultural particularities. I also look at the often contradictory ways in which the transformation of values and norms in Serbian and Danish society have impacted on the cultural and social practices of Serbian families in Denmark.

Low wages and high technology: Journalists and journalism in Serbia

This paper discusses major findings of the research project 'Profession at the Crossroads-Journalism at the Threshold of the Information Society' conducted by the Faculty of Political Sciences' Center for Media and Media Research from July 2010 till June 2011. The aim of the project was to examine social, economic and technological qualities of the journalistic community in Serbia and its capacity to respond to challenges facing the profession regarding global media changes and domestic transitional processes. Research results indicate that journalism in Serbia is in a state of limbo, and caught between delayed transition and information society very slowly mobilizes resources to respond to the forthcoming challenges.

Discursive construction of “others”: The Serbian community in southeast Kosovo in the post-war context

This paper briefly discusses method and theory and results of multi-sited field research of the Serbian community in southeast Kosovo. The paper represents a reduced version of much larger study, to follow subsequently, on relation between ethnic and other forms of collective identity of the Serbian community in southeast Kosovo in the post-war context.

Vukovar, de ville multiculturelle à ville croate

Vukovar, the once charming multicultural town at the easternmost edge of Croatia, was badly damaged during the Yugoslav conflict that put the region on fire in the early 1990s. The policies of territorial homogenization at work during the war led to the destruction of its infrastructure and its social fabric, instilling fear and hatred between Croatian and Serbian communities. Two decades after the conflict, the splitting between populations is deeply rooted in the minds and in the physic space. Reconciliation is hampered by competing nationalist ideologies that sustain resentment. This is visible in the rivalry between communities seeking to control the landscape. Indeed, landscape carries collective ideals and memory and allows a group to appropriate the territory by marking its with symbols. It is therefore crucial, in a competitive context, to have mastery over this issue both symbolic and material.

Serbs as threat the extreme negative portrayal of the Serb “minority” in Albanian-language newspapers in Kosovo

Through perpetuating negative stereotypes and rigid dichotomous identities, the media play a significant part in sustaining conflict dynamics in Kosovo. Examining their discourse in terms of ideological production and representations is crucial in order to understand the power relations between the majority and the minority, the identity politics involved in sustaining them, and the intractability of the conflict. In an effort to provide a deeper understanding of the intractable conflict in Kosovo, and the role of the media in protracting it, this study uses critical discourse analysis to examine articles related to issues affecting the Serb community, published in Albanian language print media. The master narrative that comes out of the analysis is that of ?threat? - the threat that Kosovo Albanians continue to face from Serbs and Serbia; a threat that is portrayed as historical and constant. The discourse further strengthens the conflict dynamics of opposition, polarization and even hatred. This master narrative implies that Serbs are enemies, to be feared, contested, fought against; conflict is thus the normal state of affairs. The study also looks at the implications of media discourse for reconciliation efforts and the prospects of the Serb minority in Kosovo society, arguing that when the Other is presented as dangerous and threatening, fear of the Other and a desire to eliminate the threat, physically and symbolically, become perceived as a ?natural? response, and thus constitute a significant conflict-sustaining dynamic.