| This study examines the influence of intellectuals and political elites in former Yugoslavia on the forms of ethno-national and cultural identities from the mid-1960s until the country's violent disintegration. It challenges the mainstream perspectives on ethno-nationalism in the post-socialist Eastern Europe by illuminating the diverse ways in which ethnic and cultural identities were connected to everyday life experiences during socialism. It shows that they needed to be re-molded, i.e., “hegemonized” to fit the agendas of the post-1989 political entrepreneurs. The long-time economic crises in the former Yugoslavia were played as constitutive and constitutional conflicts, and led to the competing projects of the territorial division of the country along the allegedly “natural” ethnic lines. Precisely because social life in the former Yugoslavia was characterized by a variety of non-ethnic solidarities, and because of the simmering grassroots social discontent, the organizers of territorial re-configuration of the country required the input by intellectual elites in disseminating the ideas of ethno-national self-determination as the most compelling goals of ordinary citizens. The study aims at generating some useful concepts and methods that would replace the rigid views of identities and collective action that the Cold War-era “area studies” communicated to the social sciences. |
