Ethnic Times

Exploring Ethnonationalism in the Former Yugoslavia

Dusan Kecmanovic

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780313074790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Kecmanovic deals with the phenomenon of ethnonationalism, both as a broad, worldwide concern and as a key ingredient to the struggles in the former Yugoslavia. As in the former Yugoslavia, the rise of ethnonationalistic sentiments and attitudes coincided with the transition from a state-and party-run affair to a new, post-communist type of government and society. Drawing upon his personal experiences in Sarajevo, Kecmanovic provides a unique view of the conflict. In a style accessible to students and general readers, he traces the transformations of leading principles, value systems, behavioral patterns, and views of people in times of severe ethnic tensions. At times nearly novelistic, the book examines epidemic ethnonationalism and individual manifestations such as violence toward members of other groups, beliefs that ethnic differences are genetic, a need to aggrandize and even manufacture differences between communities.

Table of contents

• Introductory Remarks
• Between Old and New Regimes
• Why There Are so Many Faithful
• Journey Through Post-Yugoslavia States in the Height of Ethnic Times
• Neither Sick nor Hale and Hearty
• The Violence of Daily Life
• The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Victim
• His Father Saved Him
• The Individual and the Collective in Ethnonationalism
• A Good Enough Enemy
• The Boomerang of Impassioned Bias
• Endemic and Epidemic Ethnonationalists
• Inverse Ethnonationalism
• The Woes of Divided Loyalty
• Ethnonationalism in the Genes
• Brief Conversation with an Ethnonationalist about Children from Ethnically Mixed Marriages
• Is There Something Mentally Wrong with Ethnonationalists?
• Why Ethnonationalists Are Aggressive
• Ethnic Stereotypes in the Writings of Croatian and Serbian Psychiatrists
• Prove You’re a Serb
• Reactive Ethnonationalists
• Obsession with Ethnicity
• For Further Reading
• Index