Serbian Identity Research Articles

Relation between European and national identity and rigidity as a personality trait

The research presented in this paper is a part of the project ?Condition, Factors and Development of European Identity in Serbia and Montenegro?, which started in 2002 with the financial support of the Ministry for Science and Protection of Environment of the Republic of Serbia. The research studied the relation between certain kinds of social identity ( European, i.e. national identity ) on the one hand, and the degree of rigidity of the subjects on the other. The sample consisted of 2685 inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, of both sexes, different levels of education and 18 to 43 years old. European, i.e. national identity was measured with the questionnaire EUROID2002, which consisted of 36 items related to different aspects of social identity. Factor analysis singled out five factors of social identity: pro-European orientation, advocating the preservation of national identity, confronting traditional values and technological civilization, globalization as a threatening factor for small and poor nations, and exclusive national attachment. Rigidity of the subjects was determined with the application of the RG-2 questionnaire which consists of 30 items related to the rigidity of thought in various life situations. Factor analysis singled out two factors of rigidity: rigidity toward oneself and others, as well as rigidity in one?s life habits. The relation between social identity and rigidity was determined with the technique of canonical analysis. Two significant canonical roots were singled out: the first canonical root includes two aspects of rigidity which were positively related to the factors implying a strongly pronounced national identity ( advocating the preservation of national identity and exclusive national attachment ). The second canonical root indicates a positive relation between rigidity in life habits and traditional standpoints and fear of globalization.

Achievement motive and locus of control as motivation factors of European identity

The research presented in this paper is a part of the project "Condition, Factors and Development of European Identity in Serbia and Montenegro" which is financed by the Ministry for Science and Protection of Environment of the Republic of Serbia. The goal of this research is to determine the relation between the achievement motive and locus of control on the one hand, and European identity on the other. These motivational factors were selected as the indicators of the active orientation of persons, which is a psychological prerequisite for the development of consciousness of the people and the society as a whole. The research was carried out during 2003 with the sample of 2635 subjects from four regions of Serbia and Montenegro, of both sexes, different levels of education, 18 to 43 years old. The scale EUROID2002 was applied to measure the European and national identity. The achievement motive was measured with the MOP2002 scale, and locus of control with LOKKON2002. All these instruments were created at the Department of Psychology in Novi Sad. The canonical correlation analysis was used to process the data. The results point to the existence of two statistically significant regularities in the relation between the achievement motive and European identity. The achievement of the goal, which is experienced as a source of pleasure and followed by the need to compete with others, was related to two factors of social identity, namely with the need to preserve national identity and with the exclusive national attachment. Thus, the results indicate that the persons for whom competition with others is a significant goal also express a higher degree of nationalism. Furthermore, the results indicate that the degree of nationalism is higher with the higher degree of persistence in the competition with others. In the relation between the locus of control and European identity, three statistically significant regularities were obtained. If the faith in the power of destiny is more pronounced, the need to preserve national identity and exclusive national attachment is also more pronounced. Stronger internal locus of control is related to greater openness for technological progress. Furthermore, the results indicate that those who in achievement situations attach great importance to the activities of other people also have a more pronounced pro-European orientation.

European identity in Serbia and Montenegro

The aims of this research are the establishment of the level and the structure of European and national identity of the citizens of Serbia and Montenegro, as well as the establishment of relations between socio-demographic characteristics of the subjects (regional belonging, age, level of education) and European identity. The sample consisted of 2853 subjects from four regions (Vojvodina, Sumadija with Belgrade, Southern Serbia, and Montenegro), divided into two age groups and two levels of education. To evaluate certain components of national and European identity, we applied EUROID2002 scale (Francesko et al., 2002). The application of the cluster analysis method defined three groups of subjects of various social identity profile: 1. multi-layered identity (European and national), 2. national exclusivity and 3. undifferentiated social identity. As factors of differentiation of subjects in the respect of European and national identity, there emerged regional belonging, age and educational level. Besides, the results show that the level of education is the most important factor in the creation of this form of social identity.

Attitudes of Serbian "returnees" about identity Serbs and Croats

Attitudes of Serbian "returnees" of Livanjsko polje about ethnic identity of Us, Serbs, and Them, Croats, are demonstrated in this article. Croats that have political control and social-economic power, appear as "Significant Others", but also Strangers, representatives of different peaceful and humanitarian organizations. Religious belief and language appear as basic symbol of difference, Marker, between Serbs and Croats, although existing attitudes in a bigger measure rely on religious belief. Basic attitudes about identity Us and Them are led out from interrelations of these Markers and people. There are two groups of attitudes about Us-identity. The 119 first group is mostly the answer at negative external determination, by which the Serbs are determinate as nationalists and aggressors. They are steered on negation of such definition, so the Serbs are generally seen as peaceful, tolerant, nationalists - internationalists; shortly, as bearers of positive collective, but also individual relation to Others. The second group of attitudes mainly relates negative aspects of Serbian identity. There are Serbian dissension, individual interests, generally - attitudes which speak about collective, but also individual negative relation of Serbs to members of their own group. Both groups of attitudes could be explaining by interrelation of orthodox religion and people. This determination of Us, as it is limited by external definition, in that way qualifies determination of Them. So, the Croats, considering the interrelation of Catholicism and people, are seen as nationalists, with clear religion - national aim and steered to its realization - as aggressors. Though, here are both negative and positive attitudes about Croat identity. If positive or negative aspects of that identity would obtain, before all depends of the fact in which measure the Croats are steered by their church, in fact, which politics, in the certain time, the catholic church prosecutes relate to orthodox church. Therefore the Croat appears as bearers of individual-positive relation to Others (Serbs), when the church do not steer them in other way. So, until the catholic, religious politics is neutral, harmonious ethnic relations are possible, owing this positive aspect of Croat identity at individual plan and aspects of Serbian identity at both, collective and individual, plan (regardless of effect of church). On concrete terrain of Livanjsko polje, Serbs see there selves as the most representative bearers of positive aspects of Serbian identity, and neighbor’s Croats (from Livno) as people with enough distanced positive aspect of Croat identity. So, ethnic identity could be the bridge in the peaceful communication of two ethnic groups which were, lately, just because of ethnic identity, conflicted (with developed militant communication).

Post-socialist identity, territoriality and European integration: Serbia’s return to Europe after Milošević

This article explores the spatiality of post-Milosevic Serbian identity in the context of European integration. The fall of the Milosevic regime has prompted Serbia’s political rehabilitation in Europe, paralleled by its pursuit of European integration. The article posits that European integration of post-socialist newcomers is a two-sided spatial process. It includes a rediscovery and reassertion of the European identity as a form of symbolic spatial repositioning in Europe and a transformation of state territoriality as European integration relaxes the state’s absolute control over territory. The article shows that a symbolic Europeanisation of Serbian identity, underpinned by contested meanings of Europe, has not led to substantial transformation of state territoriality. Furthermore, European integration has been used as a justification for the pursuit of deeply territorial national politics, hindering the transition from modern to post-modern state territoriality.

Ideological and political conflicts about popular music in Serbia

The paper is focused on ideological and political conflicts about popular music in Serbia, as a good example of wrong and confused searching for identity. Basic conflict that author is analyzing is about oriental elements (such as asymmetric rhythmic patterns and melismatic singing) and the question if they are legitimate parts of Serbian musical heritage or not. Author is making an analysis of three periods in twentieth century, in which absolutely the same arguments were used, and he's paying special attention to contemporary conflicts, trying to explain why all of the theories are ideologically based. Author is insisting on role market played in development and modernization of popular music in Serbia. The article is ending with some recommendations for better understanding of cultural identity in Serbia, and for recognizing popular music as specific field of interest and research.

Songs of seduction: popular music and Serbian nationalism

In Serbia, culture is never far removed from politics. When writing about the relationship between politics and folklore, the Serbian ethnologist Ivan * olovi ' commented that Serbian politics is saturated with folklore and that, from the late 1980s, every political leader, without exception, every political programme and every political battle made reference to folkloric texts that resorted to a raft of traditional clichés. The main vehicle for carrying the imagery, values and antagonisms of these mythical tales has been the pesma , which may be translated as either 'poem' or 'song' since the words in Serbian are interchangeable. Indeed, the traditional song has long been embedded in Serbian cultural identity, and has been inspiring Serbian nationalism since the nineteenth century. In the 1990s the stimulation of nationalism by popular and traditional Serbian songs involved a process of ethnification--a cult of the folkloric--in which popular music contributed to the estrangement, alienation and distancing of the Other. This was both a process with roots long buried in the past, as well as one that continued to flourish at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Hudson explores the impact of culture on Serbian politics, especially from the perspective of the relationship between identity formation and ethnic conflict. He investigates the links between popular musical forms and nationalism in Serbia, through an analysis of the lyrics, language and meanings of a selection of songs in a variety of different musical genres that were popular between the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Mythical aspects of Serbian identity

The paper deals with the use of mythical contents of Serbian national identity and stereotypes about Serbs in different kinds of public discourses; publicist. political and scientific. Mythical content and stereotypes are related to 'comprehensive image of the Serbian people', not to empirically testable particular identifiers. Moreover, vague stories about Serbian national being have epistemological priority over unambiguous descriptions of common collective ways of life. This feature of its usage make national myths suitable for political and cultural propaganda. They are a powerful tool for social control and manipulation. Political and cultural elites are reluctant to abandon abuses of mythical aspects in maintaining their positions. The aim of the proposed research is to identify particular abuses of mythical aspects in Serbian public discourse and disclose their historical sources, as well as to opt for a reassessment of Serbian national identity through open and scientifically grounded public discussion.

Reconstructing the Balkans: A Geography of the New Southeast Europe

Partial table of contents: THE BALKAN CONTEXT. The Balkans: Perceptions and Realities (D. Hall & D. Danta). Contemporary Balkan Questions: The Geographic and Historic Context (D. Danta & D. Hall). EMERGING FROM THE YUGOSLAV VORTEX. Place and Its Role in Serbian Identity (G. White). Destruction and Reconstruction: The Case of Dubrovnik (J. Oberreit). Macedonian Cultural and National Identity (T. Terkenli). NEIGHBOURS IN TRANSITION. Albania as a Gateway (D. Rugg). Thessaloniki and Balkan Realities (S. Kostopoulou). The Persistence of Collectivism: Responses to Land Restitution in Romania (M. Meurs). Hungary as a Place of Refuge (A. Dingsdale). THE BROADER CONTEXT. The Balkans: A European Challenge (A. Williams). Reconstructing the Balkans: The Economic Horizon (D. Hall & D. Danta). Index.

Yugoslavs into Serbs: Serbian National Identity, 1961–1971*

In an essay published in September 1962, poet Pavle Stefanovic announced that in the next census he would identify himself as a Yugoslav rather than a Serb. Writing down “Serb” on official forms, Stefanovic said, had always made the sweat break out on his forehead, plunging him into “the nightmarish vision of an individual identity imposed upon me rather than chosen by my own will, one which fills me with polar opposites: pride and shame … a feeling of innocence and of culpability.” Mixed with his pride in parts of his Serbian heritage, he explained, was horror at the atrocities committed in the name of Serbdom by the Chetniks, the Serbian monarchist forces of the Second World War. Stefanovic emphasized that he was not rejecting Serbian identity because he thought the Serbian past was worse than others. Rather, he wished to throw off the symbolic weight attached to all national pasts. By declaring himself a Yugoslav, he thought, he could show that he considered nationality merely “a sort of historic-genetic address, a fact about one's origin,” and not a primary or sacred identity. In his eyes, choosing the Yugoslav identity meant asserting his own free will against the unchosen national collective, expressing his commitment to internationalism, and separating the future from a nightmare-ridden past.

The Macedonian Conflict. Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (review)

Reviewed by: The Macedonian Conflict. Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World Roger Just Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict. Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1995. Pp. xvi + 273. 17 illustrations and 7 maps. $29.95 cloth. In 1983 Ernest Gellner could still argue, in Nations and Nationalism, that we live in a world of nationalism, a world in which the congruence of “nation” (people) and “state” (political structure) is so ingrained that we take it as an axiomatic principle of political legitimacy. Even by then, however, it might have been more accurate to suggest, as many scholars now do, that we live in a world of “ethnicity,” a world in which every “people,” every ethnic group, strives to wrest some degree of autonomy or recognition from the state or, more significantly, in defiance of the state. “Ethnicity” and “nationalism” are thus pitted against each other, but they are in fact the products of a remarkably similar process, and in The Macedonian Conflict. Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Loring M. Danforth presents us with a superb case study both of the conflict between nationalism and ethnic aspirations and of the curious parallelisms in their development. Professor Danforth’s book is, however, more than a scholarly work of anthropology and contemporary history. It is a level-headed, humane, and very timely political intervention in a quarrel that continually threatens to become more than a war of words. For that reason Danforth is unlikely to win many friends among partisans of either side; nevertheless, he must surely win the respect not only of those who claim to be “dispassionate” but also of those who are capable of comprehending the social and historical factors that shape their passions. At least for Europe, nation-states crystallized out of the fragmentation of older, more embracing political forms—the multiethnic, multilinguistic empires of Christendom and Islam in which the political structure (the state) and the nations (peoples) encompassed had no necessary unity. To that extent, nationalism could be viewed as a triumph of localism: a Finland for the Finns, an Italy for the Italians and, of course, a Greece for the Greeks—“national” territories and “national” states liberated from “foreign” rule. But who were the “Finns” or the “Italians” or the “Greeks” who won their sovereignty? For nationalists the answer is self-evident: they were Finns, Italians, and Greeks. The categories are natural kinds. For most social scientists—and, in the present case, for Danforth—such peoples are also historical constructs. In Gellner’s robust argument, it is states that create peoples, not peoples states; but even if, as Danforth suggests, Gellner’s formulation is too simple, it is nevertheless the case that nationalism’s nineteenth-century triumph itself entailed a suppression of other forms of [End Page 355] localism, since the nation-state’s existence, its very rationale, demanded that the populations of a Finland or an Italy or a Greece be “Finnish” or “Italian” or “Greek.” National homogenization being the price of national independence, nation-states had to transform themselves into the “natural” (national) unities they claimed to be. In this game there were winners and losers. The “Greeks” achieved their state, but the Vlachs, Pomaks, and Macedonians did not (as elsewhere the Basques, Catalans, and Bretons did not). The choice for such “residual” peoples was to assimilate, to become Greek—or, importantly, to “discover” that they were “Greek” (or “Spanish” or “French”)—or else to bide their time. Ethnicity thus starts where nationalism left off: a second round of frag-mentation, a second round of claims to recognition and to independence of a sort, but under somewhat different circumstances. Macedonia, the geographical area, was partitioned after 1913 among three newly formed nation-states (Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria), all of which had won their territories from the Ottoman Empire in the name of their peoples. Those who now claim a Macedonian identity—as distinct from a Greek-Macedonian, a Bulgarian, or a Serbian identity—do not, therefore, contend with the “foreign” and therefore (in contemporary terms) clearly “illegitimate” rule of an empire but, on the contrary, with the rule of nation-states whose own legitimacy rests precisely...

НИКОЛА ПАШИЧ И РОССИЯ. ИЗ ИСТОРИИ ВЗАИМООТНОШЕНИЙ

Статья содержит в себе целый спектр мнений о природе русофильства Николы Пашича. В то время, как одни интерпретаторы считают, что оно опиралось на чисто прагматические соображения, другие на первый план выдвигают русско-сербское кровное и религиозное родство, как его решающий фактор. Далее автор высказывает собственную точку зрения относительно корней «безусловного» прорусского настроя Н. Пашича. В основе его лежало цивилизационное определение – подобно русским славянофилам, Пашич и основанная им Радикальная партия выступали за сохранение сербской самобытности в условиях резко усилившегося после 1878 г. «наступления» Европы на Балканы. В заключении кратко представлены практические отношения вождя сербских радикалов с российскими властью и обществом.