Between 1914 and the present day the political makeup of the Balkans has relentlessly changed, following unpredictable shifts of international and internal borders. Between and across these borders various political communities were formed, co-existed and (dis)integrated. By analysing one hundred years of modern citizenship in Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav states, Igor ? tiks shows that the concept and practice of citizenship is necessary to understand how political communities are made, un-made and re-made. He argues that modern citizenship is a tool that can be used for different and opposing goals, from integration and re-unification to fragmentation and ethnic engineering. The study of citizenship in the 'laboratory' of the Balkands offers not only an original angle to narrate an alternative political history, but also an insight into the fine mechanics and repeating glitches of modern politics, applicable to multinational states in the European Union and beyond.

This volume offers a profound analysis of post-socialist economic and political transformation in the Balkans, involving deeply unequal societies and oligarchical “democracies.” The contributions deconstruct the persistent imaginary of the Balkans, pervasive among outsiders to the region, who see it as no more than a repository of ethnic conflict, corruption and violence. Providing a much needed critical examination of the Yugoslav socialist experience, the volume sheds light on the recent rebirth of radical politics in the Balkans, where new groups and movements struggle for a radically democratic vision of society. From the Trade Paperback edition.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the citizenship regimes of the new states that emerged out of the break up of Yugoslavia. It covers both the states that emerged out of the initial disintegration across 1991 and 1992 (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Macedonia), as well as those that have been formed recently through subsequent partitions (Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo). While citizenship has often been used as a tool of ethnic engineering to reinforce the position of the titular majority in many states, in other cases citizenship laws and practices have been liberalised as part of a wider political settlement intended to include minority communities more effectively in the political process. Meanwhile, frequent (re)definitions of these increasingly overlapping regimes still provoke conflicts among post-Yugoslav states. This volume shows how important it is for the field of citizenship studies to take into account the main changes in and varieties of citizenship regimes in the post-Yugoslav states, as a particular case of new state citizenship. At the same time, it seeks to show scholars of (post) Yugoslavia and the wider Balkans that the Yugoslav crisis, disintegration and wars as well as the current functioning of the new and old Balkan states, together with the process of their integration into the EU, cannot be fully understood without a deeper understanding of their citizenship regimes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

Alternating between Renaissance Italy and Yugoslavia during the time of Tito, this novel tells two tales of love, intrigue, and betrayal. It is the summer of 1995, the war in Bosnia is raging, and the young Bosnian narrator is taking a tour of an Italian Renaissance castle. He soon finds himself caught up in the two tales of passion and intrigue that his Franciscan guide, a refugee like himself, relates. One is the story of Enzo Strecci, a Renaissance poet from Lombardy who has the ill fortune of falling in love with the wife of Francesco Mardi, his host and protector during a time of Hapsburg incursions and espionage. The other is the story of the Franciscan's own ill-fated passion for the local Communist police commander's daughter during Tito's rupture with Stalinism. Between Rimini, Italy, in 1535 and the Croatian island of Rab in 1948, lives and fates become intertwined, history repeats itself, and nostalgia for home proves itself to be bittersweet.

What happens to the citizen when states and nations come into being? How do the different ways in which states and nations exist define relations between individuals, groups, and the government? Are all citizens equal in their rights and duties in the newly established polity? Addressing these key questions in the contested and ethnically heterogeneous post-Yugoslav states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, this book reinterprets the place of citizenship in the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the creation of new states in the Western Balkans. Carefully analysing the interplay between competing ethnic identities and state-building projects, the author proposes a new analytical framework for studying continuities and discontinuities of citizenship in post-partition, post-conflict states. The book maintains that citizenship regimes in challenged states are shaped not only by the immediate political contexts that generated them, but also by their historical trajectories, societal environments in which they exist, as well as the transformative powers of international and European factors.

In this gripping, war-torn epic novel, author Igor Štiks, a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Award, tells the story of a celebrated writer who travels to Sarajevo to unearth devastating family secrets and the lies that have defined his life. Author Richard Richter’s mother and father were always phantoms, both parents having died by the time he was four. His life, now at a crossroads, has been a jumble of invention, elusive memories, and handed-down stories. But when Richard finds his mother’s hidden notebook, written by her during World War II, he discovers a confession that was never meant to be read by anyone—least of all, her son. ,p>Richard’s quest for the truth about his life leads him to an embattled Sarajevo. In the chaos of the besieged city, he discovers something more: a transformative romance and unexpected new friendships that will change the course of his search. But fate has been playing with all of them. And just as fate determines the lives of the characters in his novel, a betrayal reaching back half a century has yet to loosen its grip—on Richard, on everyone he has come to love, and on those he has no choice but to try to forgive.

From Class to Identity offers an analysis of education policy-making in the processes of social transformation and post-conflict development in the Western Balkans. Based on a number of examples (case studies) of education reform in the former Yugoslavia from the decade before its violent breakup to contemporary efforts in post-conflict reconstruction it tells the story of the political processes and motivations underlying specific education reforms. The book moves away from technical-rational or prescriptive approaches that dominate the literature on education policy-making during social transformation, and offers an example on how to include the social, political and cultural context in the understanding of policy reforms. It connects education policy at a particular time in a particular place with broader questions such as: What is the role of education in society? What kind of education is needed for a 'good' society? Who are the 'targets' of education policies (individuals/citizens, ethnic/religious/linguistic groups, societies)? Bacevic shows how different answers to these questions influence the contents and outcomes of policies.

Religion in the Post-Yugoslav Context brings together a diverse group of scholars, each of them specializing in the role of religion in one of the Yugoslav successor states. In addition to providing the readership with the understanding of both the general context (religion during the disintegration of the Yugoslav state) as well as more specific aspects (individual post-Yugoslav states), this rich collection complements the existing research in the fields of religious studies and political science. It represents an important source for scholars and students interested in the post-Yugoslav dynamic. Moreover, this kind of analysis is of major relevance for state and non-state actors involved in promotion of religious tolerance.

This book undertakes a critical analysis of the history of domestic tourism in Yugoslavia under Communism. Despite the central role of tourism in the political making of the Yugoslav socialist state after WWII and in everyday life, the topic has remained neglected as an object of historical research, which has tended to dwell on war and "ethnic" conflict in the past two decades. For many former citizens of Yugoslavia, however, memories of holidaymaking, as well as tourism as a means of livelihood, today evoke a sense of the "good life" people enjoyed before the economy, and subsequently the country, fell apart. The story evolved from the popularization of tourism and holidaymaking among Yugoslav citizens in the 1950s and 1960s to the consumer practices of the 1970s and 1980s. The essays review tourism as a political, economic and social project of the Yugoslav federal state, and as a crucial field of social integration; it is investigated how ideologies aimed to turn workers into consumers of "purposeful" leisure, and how these ideas were set against actual practices of recreation and holidaymaking.

This remarkable book combines analysis and memoir to offer the unique perspective of an informed insider who lived through Yugoslavia's demise. Cvijeto Job's powerful and provocative story of Yugoslavia's birth, rise, and brutal destruction is intertwined with his family history as he probes deeply into the causes and legacies of Yugoslavia's ruin. The result is a sober assessment of the successes and unflinching critique of the failures of Tito's Yugoslavia and how policies that were intended to ameliorate the country's ethnic tensions were corrupted or abandoned, ending in its undoing. Job argues passionately for the intervention of the international community in Yugoslavia and offers concrete suggestions for preventing future ethnic atrocities. Anyone reading his book will come to think more deeply about the ways in which the web of history and collective political culture weave the fates of nations and individuals in times of crisis.

In the wake of devastating conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the polarizing effects of everyday ethnic divisions, combined with hardened allegiances to ethnic nationalism and the rigid arrangements imposed in international peace-building agreements, have produced what Azra Hromadžić calls an "empty nation." Hromadžić explores the void created by unresolved tensions between mandated reunification initiatives and the segregation institutionalized by power-sharing democracy, and how these conditions are experienced by youths who have come of age in postconflict Bosnia-Herzegovina. Building on long-term ethnographic research at the first integrated school of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Citizens of an Empty Nation offers a ground-level view of how the processes of reunification play out at the Mostar Gymnasium. Hromadžić details the local effects of the tensions and contradictions inherent in the processes of postwar state-making, shedding light on the larger projects of humanitarian intervention, social cohesion, cross-ethnic negotiations, and citizenship. In this careful ethnography, the Mostar Gymnasium becomes a powerful symbol for the state's simultaneous segregation and integration as the school's shared halls, bathrooms, and computer labs foster dynamic spaces for a rich cross-ethnic citizenship—or else remain empty.

An authoritative history of Yugoslavia with a new chapter on the ethnic wars in Croatia and Bosnia, and Kosovo.

We didn't know. For half a century, Western politicians and intellectuals have so explained away their inaction in the face of genocide in World War II. In stark contrast, Western observers today face a daily barrage of information and images, from CNN, the Internet, and newspapers about the parties and individuals responsible for the current Balkan War and crimes against humanity. The stories, often accompanied by video or pictures of rape, torture, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing, available almost instantaneously, do not allow even the most uninterested viewer to ignore the grim reality of genocide. And yet, while information abounds, so do rationalizations for non-intervention in Balkan affairs - the threshold of real genocide has yet to be reached in Bosnia; all sides are equally guilty; Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia is a threat to the West; it will only end when they all tire of killing each other - to name but a few. In This Time We Knew, Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic have put together a collection of critical, reflective, essays that offer detailed sociological, political, and historical analyses of western responses to the war. This volume punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction. This Time We Knew further reveals the reasons why these rationalizations have persisted and led to the West's failure to intercede, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, in the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II. Contributors to the volume include Kai Erickson, Jean Baudrillard, Mark Almond, David Riesman, Daniel Kofman, Brendan Simms, Daniele Conversi, Brad Kagan Blitz, James J. Sadkovich, and Sheri Fink.

After the conflagration of Tito’s Yugoslavia a medley of new and not-so-new states rose from the ashes. Some of the Yugoslav successor states have joined, or are about to enter, the European Union, while others are still struggling to define their national borders, symbols, and relationships with neighbouring states. Strategies of Symbolic Nation-building in South Eastern Europe expands upon the existing body of nationalism studies and explores how successful these nation-building strategies have been in the last two decades. Relying on new quantitative research results, the contributors offer interdisciplinary analyses of symbolic nation-building in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia to show that whereas the citizens of some states have reached a consensus about the nation-building project other states remain fragmented and uncertain of when the process will end. A must-read not only for scholars of the region but policy makers and others interested in understanding the complex interplay of history, symbolic politics, and post-conflict transition.

Annotation In this book, militarization, nationalism, and globalization are scrutinized at sites of violent conflict from a range of feminist pespectives.

This essential resource provides a cogent, comprehensive historical analysis of Yugoslavia's demise, one that clearly identifies events and trends that urgently demand the world's attention.

"Comparing nationalist and non-nationalist polities in order to establish how these governments differ in their treatment of women and families, Albanese concludes that the efforts of most ethno-nationalist regimes to return women to their 'natural' place in the home as housewives and mothers have been largely unsuccessful. Policies to this effect have provoked considerable opposition by women's groups and individual women, have often been reversed by subsequent governments, and have had little long-term demographic impact. Mothers of the Nation makes an important contribution to the literature on feminism, nationalism, and social and economic policy within a comparative political context."--Jacket.