Nationalism, masculinity and multicultural citizenship in Serbia*

* The research on which this article is based took place between 2001 and 2004 and was made possible by a Fellowship for East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies, a Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, an International Research and Exchanges Board Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowship and a Council for European Studies/Society for the Anthropology of Europe short-term dissertation research fellowship. My thanks goes to Aleksandra Milićević, Elissa Helms Marco Zˇivkovic´, Andrea Muehlebach, Andrew Gilbert and Kelly Gillespie for their feedback and engagement with this text.

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Notes

* The research on which this article is based took place between 2001 and 2004 and was made possible by a Fellowship for East European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies, a Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, an International Research and Exchanges Board Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowship and a Council for European Studies/Society for the Anthropology of Europe short-term dissertation research fellowship. My thanks goes to Aleksandra Milićević, Elissa Helms Marco Zˇivkovic´, Andrea Muehlebach, Andrew Gilbert and Kelly Gillespie for their feedback and engagement with this text.

1. 5 October 2000 has become iconic of democracy in Serbia. It is the day on which citizen protests and non-violent revolution brought an official end to Slobodan Milošević's decade-long rule of the country. Just weeks before this protest, Milošević had been decisively beaten at the polls, and the opposition candidate Vojislav Koštunica was elected the new president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, Milošević refused to honor the election results, and tried to force the country into a second-round election run-off. Finally, on 5 October, hundreds of thousands of citizens from all parts of Serbia marched in Belgrade. They stormed the parliament building and the headquarters of the state-controlled media, Radio and Television Serbia. Instead of firing into the crowds, Milošević's massive police force stood quietly aside or joined the protest. Milošević conceded defeat by the end of the day.

2. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 7.

3. Michael Burawoy and Katherine Verdery, Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 1–2.

4. See Elissa Helms, this volume; Aleksandra Milićević, “Joining Serbia's Wars: Volunteers and Draft-Dodgers, 1991–1995,” dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology, 2004; Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

5. Susan Gal, “Gender and Circulation in East European Politics and Societies: Introduction to the Special Issue,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2006, p. 10.

6. Wendy Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2000, pp. 563–590.

7. Ibid., p. 567.

8. Ibid., pp. 569–570.

9. See Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, The Politics of Gender after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). See also John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, “Introduction,” in John L Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, eds, Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999) pp. 1–43, on how people draw on notions of “civil society” in times of social, political and economic upheaval, and Kay Warren, Elizabeth Mertz and Carol Greenhouse, eds, Ethnography in Unstable Places (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), for how people mobilize familiar social categories in negotiating state transformations.

10. Jessica Greenberg, “‘Goodbye Serbian Kennedy’: Zoran Đinđic and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 20, 2006, pp. 126–151.

11. It is also important to note that homosexual acts were only decriminalized in Serbia in 1994.

12. Participants and media continued to emphasize this association in the wake of the anti-parade violence, and the parade became iconic of a particular form of liberal democratic politics grounded in tolerance.

13. For an analysis of Serbia as a “periphery” and the impact this status has on popular discourse and analysis of Serbia's social and political context see Marko Živković, “Jelly, Slush, and Red Mists: Poetics of Amorphous Substances in Serbian Jeremiads of the 1990s,” Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001, pp. 168–182.

14. Charles Hale, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism: The Remaking of Cultural Rights and Racial Dominance in Central America,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2005, pp. 10–28; Elizabeth Povinelli, “The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 24, 1998, pp. 575–610.

15. Descriptions of the parade are based on the author's fieldnotes.

16. Posters on Trg Republike included the following language: “(Calling the Serbian) Orthodox to a gathering: Let's prevent the anti-Christian, homosexual, immoral and perverse orgy scheduled in Belgrade, 30 June 2001, 3:00” (author's fieldnotes; this and all other translations are the author's). See also Tamara Skrozza, “Mržnja na mreži, batine na ulici,” Vreme, No. 548, 2001, <http://www.vreme.com/cms/view.php?id=291456> (accessed 14 January 2006).

17. See “Silom Prekinuta Gej Parada u Beogradu,” B92, 30 June 2001, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2001&mm=06&dd=30&nav_category=1&nav_id=27332&fs=1> (accessed on 3 April 2006). The presence of these groups would indicate that this was a coordinated event, possibly with links to right-wing political parties and members of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The president of Obraz at the time denied involvement of the group in the event, but he strongly condemned the parade and homosexuality. See “Ko je Odgovoran za prebijanje učesknika gej parade,” B92, 4 July 2001, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2001&mm=07&dd=04&nav_category=1&nav_id=27473&fs=1> (accessed 3 April 2006).

18. For such critiques see for example “Neuspela gej parada: Čistota Otačestva,” Vreme, No. 548, 2001, <http://www.vreme.com/cms/view.php?id=291455> (accessed 14 January 2006). The failure of the police to secure a public space and the violence that ensued belie the idea that the public sphere is in any way separate from the workings of state power. It is in fact structured by precisely such power. See Neera Chandhoke, “The ‘Civil’ and the ‘Political’ in Civil Society,” Democratization, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001, pp. 1–24; Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: a Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 109–142.

19. See Ivan Čolović, Politics of Identity in Serbia (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp. 295–304; Eric Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Mladen Lazić, “The Emergence of a Democratic Order in Serbia,” in Mladen Lazić, ed., Protest in Belgrade (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 1–30; Slobodan Cvejić, “General Character of the Protest and Prospects for Democratization in Serbia,” in Mladen Lazić, ed., Protest in Belgrade (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 60–77.

20. On the construction of alternative voices and public protest in Serbia see Orli Fridman, “Alternative Voices: Serbia's Anti-war Activists, 1991–2004,” dissertation, George Mason University, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 2006. For an analysis of representations of women, as well as women activists, in the media in Serbia in the 1990s see Jasmina Lukić, “Media Representations of Men and Women in Times of War and Crisis: The Case of Serbia,” in Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, eds, Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 393–423. For testimonial and analytic accounts of Women in Black's attempts to redefine Serbia's public sphere, as well as the marginalization of these protests, see Women in Black, ed., Women for Peace (Belgrade, 1998, 2005).

21. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere;” Peggy Watson, “The Rise of Masculinism in Eastern Europe,” New Left Review, Vol. 198, March/April 1993, pp. 71–82; Anne Philips, Engendering Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988); Zillah Eisenstein, Feminism and Sexual Equality: Crisis in Liberal America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).

22. On tolerance, multiculturalism and the politics of recognition see Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–73. For a critique of the contradictions in multicultural, liberal citizenship and the politics of recognition see Hale, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism;” Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Stanley Fish, “Boutique Multiculturalism,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1997, pp. 378–395; Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

23. Brown, States of Injury, 1995.

24. Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo.”

25. For an overview of the stakes of these debates see Lenard J. Cohen, The Socialist Pyramid: Elites and Power in Yugoslavia (New York: Mosaic Press, 1989).

26. Milovan Djilas, The New Class (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983 [1957]).

27. György Konrád and Iván Szelényi, Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979).

28. Konrád and Szelényi, Intellectuals, p. 203.

29. Vladimir Goati, “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: The Role of Political Elites,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1997, pp. 455–467; see also V. P. Gagnon, Jr, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

30. See for example Latinka Perović, “The Flight from Modernization,” in Nebojša Popov, ed. The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 109–122.

31. Mladen Lazić, “The Adaptive Reconstruction of Elites,” in John Higley and György Lengyel, eds, Elites after State Socialism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

32. The idea that some aspects of transition are happening too fast or that Serbia was not ready for some changes is a recognizable discourse among some politicians. Vojislav Koštunica has promoted this view, particularly with regard to issues of economic restructuring. The trope of Serbia not being “ready” for tolerance was also mobilized by some prominent figures in response to the parade. Then chief of Belgrade police, Boško Buha, who came under fire for the inadequate numbers and readiness of police at the parade, said, “it's obvious that in this environment we still aren't mature enough for this kind of expression of some people's, let's say, abnormality, or as others might call it, personal desire or sexual orientation.” “Silom Prekinuta,” B92. Zoran Djindjic, then prime minister, also mobilized such ideas about social readiness, noting, “I think that it is too early for a country which has for so long been in isolation and under a patriarchal, repressive cultural to endure this test of tolerance.” “Djindjić o Sprečavanju Gej Parade,” B92, 1 July 2001, <http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2001&mm=07&dd=01&nav_category=1&nav_id=27367&fs=1> (accessed on 3 April 2006).

33. This interview was conducted in English.

34. Author's interview.

35. Author's interview.

36. Author's interview.

37. Author's interview.

38. Author's interview.

39. Konrád and Szelényi, Intellectuals, p. 170.

40. Konrád and Szelényi, Intellectuals, p. 202 (italics in original).

41. Cohen, The Socialist Pyramid. On the anti-bureaucratic foundation of self-management see also Susan Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945–1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 117–118.

42. Ralph Pervan, Tito and the Students: The University and the University Student in Self-Managing Yugoslavia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1978), p. 10.

43. For a thorough account of this process see Jasna Dragović-Soso, “Saviours of the Nation”: Serbia's Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002). Dragović-Soso documents the way in which Serbia's intellectual opposition in the 1980s redefined itself around the question of Kosovo. In particular, it focused on the perceived failure of the Yugoslav leadership to address Kosovar Albanian demands for greater independence and the proliferation of accounts of human rights violations and forced emigration of Kosovo's Serbs. The early opposition combined nationalist elements with calls for greater democratic freedom under the banner of human rights and free speech. These nationalist intellectuals initially occupied the position of dissidents, defining themselves in opposition to communist apparatchiks who refused, as they saw it, to deal with the Kosovo question. As he came to power, Milošević was able to capitalize on and effectively coopt this movement. The initial critique of the Yugoslav leadership for failing to deal with Kosovo and the early calls for increased democratic rights gave way to a nationalist agenda that was in collusion with, rather than opposition to, the Milošević-controlled Serbian state apparatus. Despite being in power, Milošević retained the earlier language of political opposition. Once the nationalist opposition and Serbian state power were collapsed, the opposition position was no longer against the socialist state, but against the “enemies” of Serbia, nationally defined. It is in this context that he made the move from the working class masses, betrayed by the communist bureaucrats, to the Serbian people, betrayed by the anti-Serbian (and pro-Albanian) agents of Yugoslavia. See also Olivera Milosavljević, “Yugoslavia as a Mistake,” in Nebojša Popov, ed., The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 50–80, esp. pp. 67–72; Dubravka Stojanović, “The Traumatic Circle of the Serbian Opposition,” in Nebojša Popov, ed., The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), pp. 449–478; Mirjana Prošić-Dvornić, “Serbia: The Inside Story,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture and History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. 316–335.

44. Milosavljević, “Yugoslavia as a Mistake.”

45. Ibid., p. 69.

46. Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo,” pp. 578–579.

47. Ibid., pp. 579–580.

48. Steven Sampson, “Beyond Transition: Rethinking Elite Configurations in the Balkans,” in C. M. Hann, ed., Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 298.

49. There was certainly a generational dynamic to the resentment of civic leaders and intellectuals who saw themselves as presenting hard truths about Serbia's responsibility in the wars. Younger men and women felt that the moral high ground these elites took cast blame even on those too young to have had any role in decision-making during and before the wars.

50. See Bracewell, “Rape in Kosovo;” Lukić, “Media Representations of Men and Women;” Jill Benderly, “Rape, Feminism, and Nationalism in the War in Yugoslav Successor States,” in Lois West, ed., Feminist Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 59–72; Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994).

51. Zala Volčič, “The Notion of ‘the West’ in the Serbian National Imaginary,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2005, pp. 155–175. This sense of persecution by the West was seemingly confirmed for many by the 1999 NATO bombing, exacerbating a widespread sense of Western betrayal. For more on tropes of “Westernness” in the construction of Serbian and Balkan identity and politics see Robert Hayden and Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 51, 1992, pp. 1–15; Marko Živković, “Serbian Stories of Identity and Destiny in the 1980s and 1990s,” dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, 2001.

52. There was some basis to this perceived feminization of the NGO sector, since many of the leading anti-war and pro-democracy NGOs were led by women. A large number of local NGOs in the former Yugoslavia began as efforts to support refugees, particularly women and children, and to assist women who had experienced violent sexual assault during the wars of the 1990s. Thus the earliest and strongeor NGOs were often founded by women activists who were explicitly concerned with gender issues. In addition, when international donors began to pour into the region in the 1990s and as international humanitarian efforts gave way to civil society, reconstruction and democratization efforts, organizations like USAID and the World Bank began to prioritize gender sensitivity as one of their criteria for project funding. Gender projects began to pop up to meet this growing donor demand. In the case of Serbia, the NGO sector received far less international money because of sanctions throughout the 1990s. However, women activists from Serbia formed linkages with their counterparts and friends in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, providing a more organic basis for support and networking. As a result, many of the oldest and still most active Serbian NGOs have their roots in the anti-war and women's movements.

53. See Veljko Vujačić, “From Class to Nation: Left, Right, and the Ideological and Institutional Roots of Post-Communist ‘National Socialism,’” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2003, pp. 359–392; Robert Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), see pp. 75–76; Vojin Dimitrijević, “The 1974 Constitution and Constitutional Process as a Factor in the Collapse of Yugoslavia,” in Payam Akhavan and Robert Howse, eds, (Washington: Brookings Institute/Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1995), pp. 45–74.