Има ли нација на планети рибок? Локални идентитет насупрот глобалном међу младима у Србији
Are There Nations on Planet Reebok? Local vs. global identities through the eyes of Belgrade high school students

Author(s): Miroslava Malešević
Subject(s): Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, School education, Nationalism Studies, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: young; pop culture; identity; nationalism; globalism; tradition; turbo-folk;
Summary/Abstract: Joining the European Community represents the most important political goal of today’s official Serbia. At the same time, through media, in articles and speeches of the politicians and so-called “ patriotic forces” through products of folk culture, powerful resistance to that option is expressed. Its most important standpoint lies in the ideology of ethnic nationalism , which, in spite of the change of power, still constitutes a part of dominant cultural pattern in Serbia. In Serbian nationalistic discourse, acceptance of the rules which means joining the Community is interpreted as the “ dictation of the world’s power-wielders”, and moreover, as jeopardizing of cultural and national identity, danger of drowning into impersonal “ globalist” crowd by standards of the “rotten West” . How are these contradictory ideas reflected in the lives of the young high-school students in Serbia, who are supposed to become soon the citizens of the united Europe with full rights, and not just educated immigrants? Through the lives of teenagers who grew up in the country isolated from the rest of the world, brought up upon the myths of “ Serb-haters” from the West, and belonging at the same time to the large world community of adolescents and sharing the values, styles, tastes and the behavior of that subculture? How do they shape their own identity in these circum stances? This paper deals with their attitudes, hopes and future expectations in the light of these two contradictory options (“nationalistic” and “ globalistic”). The paper is based on the conversations carried out with the students of a Belgrade Grammar School. These talks included the topics of “ turbo” folk culture, its massages and the values it promotes (glamour, money, arms, sexism, machismo, and in the center of all these — the nation). The interviewers were, in the conversation about seemingly roundabout topic, expressing their opinions on “us” and “the West”, local and global culture, ethnic belonging and assimilation, consumerism etc. This research aims at demonstrating on the small sample how young inhabitants of Belgrade see “ the world” and their place in it, that is, in what way the values they grow up with correspond with the values and the principles of that world.

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