The Politics Of Symbol In Serbia

The author analyzes Serbian political mythology about the nation, in particular the role of narratives in political discourse and notions of time, nature, borders, heroism and national identity.

The author analyzes Serbian political mythology about the nation, in particular the role of narratives in political discourse and notions of time, nature, borders, heroism and national identity.

This work: analyses Serbian political mythology about the nation; examines the historical development of Serbian myths; analyses political symbolism, myth, rhetoric and propaganda, using case studies; and investigates the relationship between the masses, mass culture and politics.

"These thought-provoking essays on the Serbian ethno-myth make this book a valuable contribution to the literature on the former Yugoslavia." —The Journal of Slavic Military Studies "The newspaper articles . . . offer incisive, ironic, and often witty analyses of nationalist discourse found in a wide variety of texts, including political speeches." — Slavic Review Symbols are central to politics. In this groundbreaking work, Ivan Colevic investigates the symbols of politics and the politics of symbols in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovnia. The first part of the work, "The Serbian Political Ethno-Myth," analyzes Serbian political mythology about the nation and nationalism in particular, as well as the role of narratives in political discourse, and notions of time, nature, borders, heroism, and national identity. The second part, "From the History of Serbian Political Mythology," is concerned with the historical development of Serbian political myths. The third part, "Characters and Figures of Power," comprises case studies which analyze political symbolism, myth, rhetoric, and propaganda. These studies are based on examples gleaned from the Serbian press, academic texts and literature, political speeches, and from everyday life. Finally, Colevic investigates the relationship between the masses, mass culture, and politics, including the recruitment of soccer fans into the war in the former Yugoslavia, and how symbolic communication was used by Serbia's anti-Milosevic opposition.

Thomas carefully examines the complexities of modern Serbian politics, largely in the words of the political players themselves. He illuminates the chronic factionalism that has frustrated any attempt to unseat Slobodan Milosevic from the presidency.

Discusses Serbia’s struggle for democratic values after the fall of the Milošević regime provoked by the NATO war, and after the trauma caused by the secession of Kosovo. Are the value systems of the post-Milošević era true stumbling blocks of a delayed transition of this country? Seventeen contributors from Norway, Serbia, Italy, Germany, Poland and some other European countries covered a broad range of topics in order to provide answers to this question. The subjects of their investigations were national myths and symbols, history textbooks, media, film, religion, inter-ethnic dialogue, transitional justice, political party agendas and other related themes. The authors of the essays represent different scholarly disciplines whose theoretical conceptions and frameworks are employed in order to analyze two alternative value systems in Serbia: liberal, cosmopolitan and civic on the one hand, and traditional, provincial, nationalist on the other.

During their thirteen years in power, Slobodan Milosevic and his cohorts plunged Yugoslavia into wars of ethnic cleansing, leading to the murder of thousands of civilians. The Milosevic regime also subverted the nation's culture, twisted the political mainstream into a virulent nationalist mold, sapped the economy through war and the criminalization of a free market, returned to gender relations of a bygone era, and left the state so dysfunctional that its peripheries--Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro--have been struggling to maximize their distance from Belgrade, through far-reaching autonomy or through outright independence. In this valuable collection of essays, Vjeran Pavlakovic, Reneo Lukic, and Obrad Kesic examine elements of continuity and discontinuity from the Milosevic era to the twenty-first century, the struggle at the center of power, and relations between Serbia and Montenegro. Contributions by Sabrina Ramet, James Gow, and Milena Michalski explore the role of Serbian wartime propaganda and the impact of the war on Serbian society. Essays by Eric Gordy, Maja Miljovic, Marko Hoare, and Kari Osland look at the legacy of Serbia's recent wars-issues of guilt and responsibility, the economy, and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague. Sabrina Ramet and Biljana Bijelic address the themes of culture and values. Frances Trix, Emil Kerenji, and Dennis Reinhartz explore the peripheries in the politics of Kosovo/a, Vojvodina, and Serbia's Roma. Serbia Since 1989 reveals a Serbia that is still traumatized from Milosevic's rule and groping toward redefining its place in the world.

This study examines, in the context of Serbia's political and cultural development, how in the late 1980s a faction within the Serbian Communist Party, led by Slobodon Milosevic, was able to exploit national and constitutional tensions within the former Yugoslavia in order to preserve its power.