Yugoslav Region Research Articles

Beyond context: taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability

ABSTRACT The article argues for taking political economy seriously in the study of corporate accountability in transitional justice processes. Corporate actors are now commonly involved in transitional justice (that is, attempts at doing justice in the aftermath of mass violence). However, the literature is still limited by an inclination to treat political economy as context, rather than as a structuring factor intervening both on the war-related or authoritarian violence and on the efforts to make corporate actors accountable. This article proposes three shifts towards a better understanding of the political economy of corporate accountability in TJ: from a focus on the proximate economic causes of war to a genealogical view of pre-war, wartime and post-war economies; towards a more holistic view of conflict financing; and from an emphasis on the political economy of war to the political economy of violence. These shifts allow us to analyse a greater variety of political economies of corporate accountability, address more diffuse responsibilities for violence and injustice, and cover forms of violence that extend over longer periods of time. While holding broader relevance for the field, the arguments are illustrated with reference to the former Yugoslav region and the Bosnian War.

CatherineBaker, Race and the Yugoslav region: Postsocialist, post‐conflict, postcolonial?, Manchester University Press, 2018, pp. 256, £26.00 (pbk)

CatherineBaker, Race and the Yugoslav region: Postsocialist, post‐conflict, postcolonial?, Manchester University Press, 2018, pp. 256, £26.00 (pbk)

The 1999 NATO Intervention from a Comparative Perspective: An Introduction

Abstract The special issue revisits the NATO intervention in the 1998–1999 Kosovo War by bringing together comparative perspectives from the war-affected states of the former Yugoslavia, on the one hand, and countries that supported or opposed NATO, on the other. The authors in this special issue look at the mediatization of the NATO intervention and its ambivalent legacies in and beyond the Yugoslav region. They provide insights into contested processes of mobilization for or against a military intervention in the Kosovo War, focusing on the case studies of Greece, Germany, and China. Moreover, they analyze the political legacies and mnemonic practices in the aftermath of this military intervention by highlighting the opposing narratives of memory politics in Kosovo and Serbia.

The Color Line in Southeastern Europe: A Du Boisian Analysis of the Yugoslav Region

AbstractSociologists apply the theory and methods of W.E.B. Du Bois to cases of widely-understood racial difference, often using the historical black-white divide of the United States as a default case. As a result, there is a dearth of Du Boisian analysis of phenomena that are primarily conceptualized using non-racial categories such as nation, ethnicity, or class. However, Du Bois's theories and the racialized structures they address are global in scope. This article uses Du Boisian theory to examine identity discourse surrounding the Yugoslav region, an ostensibly white space at the blurred border of Europe and historical empire. This article places Du Bois in conversation with critical Balkan scholarship to reveal the ways in which South Slavic populations experience unique versions of racialized double consciousness, despite assumptions of whiteness. This framing illuminates the presence of race and empire otherwise obscured in discussions of historical conflict. We can better understand the relevance of a global Du Boisian project if we reject the assumption that processes of racialization map neatly onto bounded populations or geographic spaces.

Contributors’ Notes

Contributors’ Notes

House of Flowers: An Analysis of the Image of Yugoslavia in Video Games

This article examines the image of Yugoslavia in contemporary video games. I researched games of various genres (action games, strategy games, military simulators, etc.) that were released on various gaming platforms (PC, Sony PlayStation, etc.) between 1990 and the present day. I researched such aspects as visualization, information, plot components, and popularity among players. I consider and provide definitions of the terms used to designate various elements of video games and their meaning for the perception of the image of the country. I paid special attention to the characters associated with the Yugoslav region. Two of them – the inventor Nikola Tesla and the main character of the comics of the same name, Largo Winch – owing to their potential significance for the image of Yugoslavia, were considered in detail. The article is accompanied by four illustrations showing important moments of the visualization of personalities and the structure of game moments. As a result of this research, I draw some conclusions about the main plots associated with the image of Yugoslavia that prevails in modern video games. Firstly, there is the obvious peripherality of Yugoslav plots and their generally negative connotation. In most of the video games reviewed, the settings involved the criminal world, the Yugoslav war of the 1990s, or the problem of international terrorism. Secondly, the portrayal of Yugoslav characters is not very homogeneous and it is therefore impossible to talk about their exclusively positive or negative character. Thirdly, in general, Yugoslavia is mostly unplayable: only a very limited set of strategy games and a very small set of action games allow you to control the country, its troops, or characters of Yugoslavian origin.

Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in a Global Context. Ed. David Rainbow. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. xiii, 349 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95, paper. - Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial? By Catherine Baker. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018. xii, 237 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $40.00, paper.

Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in a Global Context. Ed. David Rainbow. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. xiii, 349 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 40.00, paper. - Volume 79 Issue 3

Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-conflict, Postcolonial?

Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-conflict, Postcolonial?

Postcoloniality Without Race? Racial Exceptionalism and Southeast European Cultural Studies

The black Dutch feminist Gloria Wekker, assembling past and present everyday expressions of racialized imagination which collectively undermine hegemonic beliefs that white Dutch society has no historic responsibility for racism, writes in her book White Innocence that “one can do postcolonial studies very well without ever critically addressing race.” Two and a half decades after the adaptation of postcolonial thought to explain aspects of cultural politics during the break-up of Yugoslavia created important tools for understanding the construction of national, regional, and socioeconomic identities around hierarchical notions of Europe and the Balkans in the Yugoslav region and beyond, Wekker's observation is still largely true for Southeast European studies, where no intervention establishing race and whiteness as categories of analysis has reframed the field like work by Maria Todorova on “balkanism” or Milica Bakić-Hayden on “symbolic geographies” and “nesting orientalism” did in the early 1990s. Critical race theorists such as Charles Mills nevertheless argue that “race” as a structure of thought and feeling that legitimized colonialism and slavery (and still informs structural white supremacy) involved precisely the kind of essentialized link between people and territory that Southeast European cultural theory also critiques: the construction of spatialized hierarchies specifying which peoples and territories could have more or less access to civilization and modernity. Southeast European studies' latent racial exceptionalism has some roots in the race-blind anticolonial solidarities of state socialist internationalism (further intensified for Yugoslavia through the politics of Non-Alignment) but also, this essay suggests, in deeper associations between Europeanness, whiteness, and modernity that remain part of the history of “Europe” as an idea even if, by the end of the twentieth century, they were silenced more often than voiced.

Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojic and feminism in transition

The text examines artist Tanja Ostojic?s interdisciplinary research project entitled Lexicon of Tanjas Ostojic, in the light of feminist materialist theories, participatory art, and socio-political analysis of the former Yugoslav region. Tanja Ostojic decided to frame her project around the lives of women who share her first and last name. Ostojic?s name-sisters became her collaborators as the work turned into a large-scale, long-term project involving 33 women and their personal histories. The women all share a mutual connection to the Yugoslav region that has directly or indirectly shaped their lives through its turbulent recent history. Artist?s intent was to use the stories encountered by collaborating with her name-sisters as a foil to uncover and highlight the connecting personal narratives following Yugoslav wars of succession in the 1990s and in doing so point to the detrimental legacies of war and transition on women?s lives. In this article, author?s main argument borrows from Karen Barad?s discursive-material ontology to point out that Lexicon activates a form of material feminism which functions intra-actively, in other words, in both its form and content the work recognizes that women?s lives are continuously constituted and re-constituted through multiple linguistic and material formations, or through complex relationships between humans, non-humans, and various discursive and material contexts. In using materialist feminist analysis, the author argues that Lexicon gives primacy to women?s agency and proposes a sustained, growing forms of resistance to the forms of post-socialist exploitation.

The regional pattern of Australia’s largest overseas-born populations

The first decades of the new millennium have seen a dramatic increase in the level of net overseas migration to Australia. This has been accompanied by growing diversity in the origins of migrants away from the traditional source countries in Northern and Western Europe towards Asia. One result of this trend is an increasingly complex settlement geography. This Regional Graphic paper seeks to represent Australia’s immigrant geography by mapping the largest overseas-born population for regions of Australia using recently released 2016 Census data. The maps reveal a strong regionalization in migrant populations. Patterns reflect the concentration of some smaller migrant groups (e.g., Former Yugoslav Region (FYR) of Macedonia), while larger migrant groups (e.g., the UK) are more dispersed across the continent. Climate and geographical proximity to immigrants’ country of origin are possible factors driving the observed broad-level geographical variation in settlement.

Singing with gusle accompaniment and the music industry: The first gramophone records of gusle players` performances (1908−1931/2)

The gramophone record industry had developed in the Yugoslav region from the beginning of the 20th century. The paper is based on an analysis of the corpus of 78 rpm records of singing with gusle accompaniment, which were produced between 1908 and 1932. Available recordings highlight the issue of representing both the epic and the gusle playing tradition in this media format and its relationship with ?unmediated? live gusle playing practice. Therefore the authors opted to analyze gramophone records as both a text in culture and an actor in tradition. After introductory theoretical and methodological remarks, the authors offer a brief description of the historical, political and socio-cultural context that emphasized epic singing with gusle accompaniment as a representative traditional genre in this area. For that reason it was noteworthy for both western and local production companies which made recordings in the Balkans (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft mbH., Odeon Records, Marsh Laboratories, Inc., Edison Bell Penkala Ltd.). Analysis of the recordings is focused on examination of the way in which gusle players responded to different requirements of the new media (e.g. the insufficient capacity of a record itself compared to the usual duration of a performance; the reduction of a complex form of artistic communication to an oral, auditory message, while additional forms of non-verbal communication are excluded). Through discussion of the treatment of verbal and musical components of the recorded performances it has been shown that tradition was simultaneously exemplified and reshaped by this new medium. In addition to the guslars themselves, being already recognized artists in this traditional genre and the acoustic source (the voice accompanied by the gusle), the representative base of the epic tradition comprised traditional (poetic) texts, although modifications / innovations are recognizable at different levels of verbal content, as well as on the level of music interpretation. On these bases, it is possible to talk about the contribution of new media to the professionalization of guslars? practice and the creation of ?stars? among them on the one hand, and the progressive transformation of once-active audience members (in the sense of potentially exchangeable performer / listener positions) into passive buyers and consumers, on the other. It is noted that these, first gramophone records of guslars had a great role in and impact on the survival of the epic singing tradition, brokering its promotion in urban areas and among the ?cultural elite?. Finally, in this way they contributed to the strengthening of this tradition in a historical period that brought disintegration of the system of traditional culture and ?crisis? of the most of the current classic folklore genres.

A Wandering Bullet: Staging the Sarajevo Assassination in Biljana Srbljanović’s Play Princip: This Grave is too Small for Me

This essay explores the remembrance of the Sarajevo assassination in the centenary year with a particular focus on theatrical productions in Austria and former Yugoslavia. The momentous event of June 1914 has been evoked in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cultures in different periods and with different pragmatic goals. The twists of this memory site are illustrated with reference to Genette’s concept of ellipsis (silence), prolepsis (prefiguration) and paralepsis (divination). The essay analyses the recent play by Biljana Srbljanović, Princip: This Grave Is Too Small for Me against the backdrop of the playwright’s earlier dramatic works as well as in the context of the dominant articulations of the mythos of assassination. The essay argues that Srbljanović’s play for all its vociferousness does not bring much novelty to her own opus nor for that matter to the existing patterns of remembrance of Franz Ferdinand and Gavrilo Princip. The constitutive ambiguities and inconsistencies of the dramatic text are then explored in its two stage renditions, one in Austria and the other in the former Yugoslav region. Although the two productions cater for different audiences in different languages they nevertheless end up in the same pitfall: they try to salvage the text at the cost of sacrificing stage momentum and the ethical credibility of the characters represented.

Football’s positive influence on integration in diverse societies: the case study of Yugoslavia

The paper analyses the game of football as a force of integration in diverse and war-torn societies. It is focused on Yugoslavia in two turbulent historical periods: after the First World War, when its nations had just started to form joint institutions; and after the Second World War, when the country was severely devastated by the Nazi occupiers and a bloody internal civil and ethnic strife. In both of these periods, football proved to be a positive influence in rebuilding trust and mutual cooperation. Regional differences also played a part in the process, both in terms of organization, and in terms of regional identities. The latter often influenced the social life of Yugoslav regions, and, thus, football as a part of it, but the influence was mutual, which is examined in this study. Finally, it is unavoidable to dwell, at least marginally, on the effect the game had on social distances and social integration.

Challenges and Perspectives of Polish Foreign Policy Towards the Post-Yugoslav Region

In the new, post-Cold War reality Polish foreign policy faced challenges stemming from the need to set targets that would reflect the interests of Poland, as well as take into account the changes in the international environment. Gradually, the assumptions and directions of foreign policy were rebuilt, with an aim to ensure the safety of the country in both internal and external dimension, to provide the territorial integrity, strengthen the sovereignty and create optimal conditions for the development of the state and society. After 1989, as a consequence of the concentration of efforts of Polish diplomacy on the implementation of strategic directions of foreign policy, others had a secondary meaning. Polish vital interests were located in the Euro-Atlantic area, in the immediate vicinity, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe, which is why in the first place all strengths and resources were engaged there in order to implement the strategic tasks of foreign policy; the Western Balkans remained on the sidelines, in the territory of former Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, this did not mean the total marginalization of the post- -Yugoslav region, and the perception of the events associated with the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation as not directly, but only indirectly connected with Polish interests.

Who Is Who in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes: A Formal Analysis of Jovan Cvijić’s Treatise on South Slav Unity

The the paper explores the causes and effects of the ideological background of Jovan Cvijić’s anthropogeographical and ethnopsychological research in the former Yugoslav region of the Balkan Peninsula. The paper shows that Cvijić’s intellectual endeavors to forge a new Yugoslav identity, which he believed to be indispensable for the successful implementation of the South Slav state unification project, were based on ethnocentric premises that resulted in implicit " scientific" evidence about kinship among the South Slavs recognized through Serbian ethnic attributes. For Cvijić, therefore, the Yugoslav idea did not in essence have a supraethnic character; on the contrary, it was the Serbian identity that provided the basis of the Yugoslav "nation".

Day of mourning and time of reminiscence: Death, funeral and reminiscence of political famous persons in Serbia in socialist era and afterwards

The most impressive event of death in the Yugoslav region in the last 50 years was definitely associated with death and funeral of Josip Broz Tito, in May 1980. The departure of one of the last European pharaohs has marked the beginning of an end of an era, with still hard to measure ideological and political consequences. In a symbolic sense, the departure represented a final breakdown of the proclaimed rational and secular walls of communist ideology, whose foundations contained complex religious symbolic and rhetoric. Tito came to be remembered while he was still alive. He was the only living hero portrayed in monuments, whose name was displayed in street appellations and public institutions. Media concept of his death and funeral represented a confirmation and continuation of this reminiscence; in addition, the deeper meaning of this reminiscence revealed an essential negation of the fact that the mighty ruler is actually dead. Tito's position of a supreme deity, acquired during his lifetime, was even more firmly established by his death. In this way, it could be argued that death has contributed to Broz' deification, thus extending his cult furthermore. The question remains whether the faith in his divine soul would persevere the temptations of history if he had lived for a few years more? It appears that the same question could be posed in regards to the deification of assassinated prime minister, Dr Zoran Djindjic, whose death, funeral and post mortem glory represent almost the only comparable event from the recent Serbian history, to those of the complex death related rhetoric of Broz? The post mortem image of Dr Djindjic was created based on Christian model of martyr and sufferer, but also on the model of exemplar death, that is, heroic and martyr's death in the name of nation, an important element of a special religious system, i.e., religion of nation. In 2006, during the annual commemoration dedicated to Zoran Djindjic, media coverage had turned to another event: Slobodan Milosevic had suddenly died in Scheveningen. Date of dying was not the only thing that has, for a moment, put these two celebrated politicians together. Death in prison, in Hague tribunal, while being in exile, has allowed that (short-lived) post mortem glory of the former president of FRY be built according to the Christian model of martyr and sufferer. On the other hand, Milosevic's ideological position (in between communism and democracy) has determined that the rhetoric associated with his departure is a combination of pagan and Christian motives. Hence, media and public images from the day he died until the funeral, were saturated with pagan symbolism and myths. It is interesting to note that these cited examples reflect the process where changes in basic secular ideologies are accompanied by a change in religious patterns as well. In turn, these religious patterns help to solve cultural contradictions and doubtfulness.

Imagining the Balkans, Imagining Germany: Intellectual Journeys to Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s

Mitten in Europa, in Hor- und Sichtweite von Italien, Osterreich und Griechenland findet ein Krieg statt [...] -Peter Schneider, Bosnien 57 The question of exact location of Yugoslavia was hotly debated in Germany during 1990s. If, for example, Sarajevo was in as writer Peter Schneider insisted in citation above, then this was a war demanding intervention. More often than not, however, one or all warring parties were described as being Balkan, reducing conflict to yet another war driven by region's supposedly characteristic, deeply rooted hatred between various ethnic groups which would render intervention fruitless. Often, two toponyms were used interchangeably allowing for more complex positionings of self and other. This article concerns itself with of such imaginary cartographies in accounts of four journeys to region published in German media. It explores ways in which authors draw borders between a European self, more often than not defined as civilized, democratic, and tolerant, and a Balkan other, generally defined as primitive, violent, and racist. At same time, this debate never truly concerned itself with identities, Western or otherwise, but rather constituted a way of exploring complex renegotiation of identities in contemporary Germany. Germany itself was undergoing a dramatic transformation process coping with integration of eastern Germany, revival of neo-Nazi politics, and increased racism against migrants. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that Germans preferred to turn their attentions to former Yugoslavia, where transformation process had sparked extreme nationalism and racism leading to disintegration of region. This study examines ways in which in/exclusion in Europe is established through representation of various Yugoslav regions via mapping of its boundaries and description (or lack thereof) of its inhabitants and their culture. At same time, such descriptions of cultural affinities shared between region in question and traveler's country of origin, usually generalized as West or Europe, is an important device in situating traveler within his own intellectual culture, while at same time reinforcing superiority of certain values over others. Eastern Europe's role in affirming true Europeanness of Western Europe has been clearly shown by Larry Wolff who argued that notion of Eastern Europe as shadowed lands of backwardness, even barbarism was invented in Enlightenment as a complement to Europe's civilization, a term appropriated by Europe to describe itself (4). While this construct survived into 20th century, it received its strongest possible reinforcement through Iron Curtain which followed contours of Enlightenment division. Ultimately, success of Cold War disguised the fact that division of Europe was also an ongoing work of intellectual artifice and cultural construction (Wolff 370). In recent years, scholarly attention has been directed at study of Balkans and discourses at work both within and outside region. In her path-breaking study Imagining Balkans, Maria Todorova makes a convincing case for existence of a distinct discourse of balkanism which clearly delineates between former Ottoman territories and rest of Europe. While she insists on existence of a concrete entity, historically shaped by Ottoman rule, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has observed that the Balkans are always somewhere else (3). This idea has been developed more fully by Bakic-Hayden who coined expression nesting orientalisms to express gradation of Orients', between Europe and Balkans, but also between states themselves. The discourse is therefore appropriated both inside and outside of Balkans to construct difference and sameness. …

Croatian journalists’ narratives on Croatian war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The former Yugoslav wars of 1990s have proven to be one of the most violent and aggressive military conflicts after the 2nd World War in Europe. One of the wars in the former Yugoslav region took place between Croats and Bosnian Muslims (1992-1994). The causes for war and war itself are still being denied by the majority of Croats despite evidence from Croatian historians and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Because the media have played a crucial role in the construction of the ethnic “Other” (the enemy), we’ve interviewed Croatian journalists to understand how they understand, explain and justify the war crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The study shows that Croatian journalists appropriated “war on terrorism”, “Iraqi war”, “European” and “neo-liberal” discourses according to their own socio-historical framework to justify a particular ideology (in this case, the nationalistic ideology of a “Greater Croatia”) and a particular practice (the war crimes against the Bosnian Muslims).

Looking Back Without Anger: Favourable Factors of Ethnic Kosovar Conflict Revisited

The present work depicts and analyses macro-factors that contributed to the emergence of ethnic conflict at Kosovo province in former Yugoslavia. Geographical, historical, political, economical, sociological, anthropological, and psychosocial factors are considered in order to explain the conflicting nature of Yugoslav regions and the independent movements developed among its Balkan cultures. Kosovo‘s conflict is then defined as both a religious and ethnic one but promoted by economical interests of national and international agents. Our reflections on the matter pointed out that power imbalance between primary parts, politics of autarchy, symbolic strategies around ―ethnic cleansing‖, sacred ideologies, and political pressures of outer countries are on the origin of this ethnic conflict. The definition of ―nation‖ is then de constructed to explain achievements of economical positions. Finally, the potential of a renewing war between Albanian and Serbian groups at Kosovo is also carefully thought using this theoretical analysis and content analysis of Spanish recent columns from three main newspapers of different social ideology.