Bastards of Utopia, the companion to a feature documentary film of the same name, explores the experiences and political imagination of young radical activists in the former Yugoslavia, participants ...in what they call alterglobalization or "globalization from below." Ethnographer Maple Razsa follows individual activists from the transnational protests against globalization of the early 2000s through the Occupy encampments. His portrayal of activism is both empathetic and unflinching-an engaged, elegant meditation on the struggle to re-imagine leftist politics and the power of a country's youth. More information on the film can be found at www.der.org/films/bastards-of-utopia.html.
Drawing on the new ways of reading and studying ancient and early medieval sources, this book explores the appearance of the Croat identity in early medieval Dalmatia.
Based on extensive research on the ethnolinguistic and racial ideas of leading Croatian nationalist intellectuals, this book provides a detailed analysis of race theory in one of the Third Reich's ...lesser known allied states, the Independent State of Croatia.
"Only unity saves the Serbs" is the famous call for unity in the Serb nationalist doctrine. But even though this doctrine was ideologically adhered to by most of the Serb leaders in Croatia and ...Bosnia, disunity characterized Serb politics during the Yugoslav disintegration and war. Nationalism was contested and nationalist claims to homogeneity did not reflect the reality of Serb politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Serb politics and challenges widespread assumptions regarding the Yugoslav conflict and war. It finds that although Slobodan Milosevic played a highly significant role, he was not always able to control the local Serb leaders. Moreover, it adds to the emerging evidence of the lack of importance of popular attitudes; hardline dominance was generally based on the control of economic and coercive resources rather than on elites successfully "playing the ethnic card." It moves beyond an assumption of automatic ethnic outbidding and thus contributes toward a better understanding of intra-ethnic rivalry in other cases such as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, Nagorno-Karabakh and Rwanda.
In Amoral Communities, Mila Dragojevi? examines how conditions conducive to atrocities against civilians are created during wartime in some communities. She identifies the exclusion of moderates and ...the production of borders as the main processes. In these places, political and ethnic identities become linked and targeted violence against civilians becomes both tolerated and justified by the respective authorities as a necessary sacrifice for a greater political goal. Dragojevi? augments the literature on genocide and civil wars by demonstrating how violence can be used as a political strategy, and how communities, as well as individuals, remember episodes of violence against civilians. The communities on which she focuses are Croatia in the 1990s and Uganda and Guatemala in the 1980s. In each case Dragojevi? considers how people who have lived peacefully as neighbors for many years are suddenly transformed into enemies, yet intracommunal violence is not ubiquitous throughout the conflict zone; rather, it is specific to particular regions or villages within those zones. Reporting on the varying wartime experiences of individuals, she adds depth, emotion, and objectivity to the historical and socioeconomic conditions that shaped each conflict. Furthermore, as Amoral Communities describes, the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders limit individuals' freedom to express their views, work to prevent the possible defection of members of an in-group, and facilitate identification of individuals who are purportedly a threat. Even before mass killings begin, Dragojevi? finds, these and similar changes will have transformed particular villages or regions into amoral communities, places where the definition of crime changes and violence is justified as a form of self-defense by perpetrators.
Expelling the plague Zlata Blazina Tomic, Vesna Blazina
Expelling the plague,
2015, 20150401, 2015, 2015-04-17, 2015-04-01, Letnik:
43, 43.
eBook
A vibrant city-state on the Adriatic sea, Dubrovnik, also known as Ragusa, was a hub for the international trade between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the city suffered frequent ...outbreaks of plague. Through a comprehensive analysis of these epidemics in Dubrovnik, Expelling the Plague explores the increasingly sophisticated plague control regulations that were adopted by the city and implemented by its health officials. In 1377, Dubrovnik became the first city in the world to develop and implement quarantine legislation, and in 1390 it established the earliest recorded permanent Health Office. The city’s preoccupation with plague control and the powers granted to its Health Office led to a rich archival record chronicling the city’s experience of plague, its attempts to safeguard public health, and the social effects of its practices of quarantine, prosecution, and punishment. These sources form the foundation of the authors' analysis, in particular the manuscript Libro deli Signori Chazamorbi, 1500-30, a rare health record of the 1526-27 calamitous plague epidemic. Teeming with real people across the spectrum, including gravediggers, laundresses, and plague survivors, it contains the testimonies collected during trial proceedings conducted by health officials against violators of public health regulations. Outlining the contributions of Dubrovnik in conceiving and establishing early public health measures in Europe, Expelling the Plague reveals how health concerns of the past greatly resemble contemporary anxieties about battling epidemics such as SARS, avian flu, and the Ebola virus.
The Italians of Dalmatia Monzali, Luciano; Evans, Shanti
The Italians of Dalmatia,
c2009, 20090926, 2009, 2009-01-01
eBook
Using little-known Italian, Austrian, and Dalmatian sources, Monzali explores the political history of Dalmatia between 1848 and 1915, with a focus on the Italian minority, on Austrian-Italian ...relations and on the foreign policy of the Italian state towards the region and its peoples.
Mythologies and narratives of victimization pervade contemporary Croatia, set against the backdrop of militarized notions of masculinity and the political mobilization of religion and nationhood. ...Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Dalmatia in the Croatian-Bosnian border region, this book provides a unique account of the politics of ambiguous Europeanness from the perspective of those living at Europe's margins. Examining phenomena such as Marian apparitions, a historic knights tournament, the symbolic re-signification of a massacre site, and the desolate social situation of Croatian war veterans,Narrating Victimhoodtraces the complex mechanisms of political radicalization in a post-war scenario. This book provides a new perspective for understanding the ongoing processes of transformation in Southeastern Europe and the Balkans.
Recasting the birth of fascism, nationalism, and the fall
of empire after World War I, Dominique Kirchner Reill recounts how
the people of Fiume tried to recreate empire in the guise of the
nation. ...The Fiume Crisis recasts what we know
about the birth of fascism, the rise of nationalism, and the fall
of empire after World War I by telling the story of the three-year
period when the Adriatic city of Fiume (today Rijeka, in Croatia)
generated an international crisis. In 1919 the multicultural former
Habsburg city was occupied by the paramilitary forces of the
flamboyant poet-soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio, who aimed to annex the
territory to Italy and became an inspiration to Mussolini. Many
local Italians supported the effort, nurturing a standard tale of
nationalist fanaticism. However, Dominique Kirchner Reill shows
that practical realities, not nationalist ideals, were in the
driver's seat. Support for annexation was largely a result of the
daily frustrations of life in a "ghost state" set adrift by the
fall of the empire. D'Annunzio's ideology and proto-fascist
charisma notwithstanding, what the people of Fiume wanted was
prosperity, which they associated with the autonomy they had
enjoyed under Habsburg sovereignty. In these twilight years between
the world that was and the world that would be, many across the
former empire sought to restore the familiar forms of governance
that once supported them. To the extent that they turned to
nation-states, it was not out of zeal for nationalist
self-determination but in the hope that these states would restore
the benefits of cosmopolitan empire. Against the too-smooth
narrative of postwar nationalism, The Fiume Crisis
demonstrates the endurance of the imperial imagination and carves
out an essential place for history from below.
