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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.
List of contents
Introductory Remarks
Between the Old Regime and the New
Why There Are So Many Faithful
Journey Through Post-Yugoslavia 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 Enthnonationalism
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
Index
About the author
Dusan Kecmanovic
