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At the root of the civil war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia lies a clash of different ethnic nationalisms that considerably influenced the content of many anthropological debates dedicated to social phenomena which appeared in the context of the disappearance of the multinational state of the South Slavic peoples. Heuristically, the most productive method for an anthropological assessment of nationalisms is based upon an interpretation of the nationalistic idiom in the context of the structural preconditions on the national and global scene. In the Yugoslavia, a process of state decentralization that lasted several decades, as well as the culmination of the denationalization processes on a global scale, have preconditioned the advantage of the particularistic nationalisms of nonSerbian peoples, confronted by the integrated Serb nationalism.
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At the end of the 20th century, Serbian nationalism witnessed its revival, in the context of enforced decentralization of Yugoslavia and Serbia brought by the 1974 Constitution. A majority of political actors in Serbia were inclined towards a federative Yugoslavia, but there was an option intended for the case in which other nations would not want the same. It is wrong to think that nationalist unity on the Serbian political scene at the beginning of nineties was a result of attitudes expressed in the Memo of Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In reality, Serbian academics and politicians, as well as the majority of Serbian public, were thinking within the framework of Serbian political idiom that was constructed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In its base lies a form of integrationist nationalism, which, like the idea of creation of a state that would gather all Serbs, was filled with ideas of south-Slavic, Balkan and pan-Slavic unity. This striving for national unity was followed by anti-imperialistic struggles against the Ottoman, Habsburg and German empires, followed by mass resistance to Hitler's Reich and other Nazi-fascist forces, as well as the conflict with USA and their western allies in the last decade of the 20th century. Integrationist and anti-imperial character of Serbian nationalism rendered it compatible with Yugoslav pan-nationalism. The possibility to transcend, led them to direct confrontation with other ethnonationalisms in Yugoslavia to whom separatism and particularism were inherent. Since their culmination was in the period of economic globalization, which favors ethnonationalisms, regional autonomisms and other forms of political separatism and particularism, Serbian nationalism and Yugoslav pan-nationalism were doomed to failure.
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By structuring his analysis into four key segments (1) Nationrelated contradictions and identity ambiguities; (2) Identity policies and multiculturalism; (3) Transitional identity engineering in Serbia, and (4) Projections of the future and prospects of multicultural strategies, the author corroborates the following thesis: regardless of numerous challenges of multiculturalism and dramatic open issues concerning the economic and financial crisis, as well as the refugee crisis, the EU policies of identity (both national and European) cannot preserve the advantage of the existing and globally unique civilizational values, nor can they prove their effectiveness in the consolidation of the democracy and integration of transition societies if the power to define identity is acquired (or preserved) by xenophobes and ethno-nationalists. Instead of traditional notions and (ultra)conservative (anti-)politics, the crisis requires new ideasand strategies. Therefore, multiculturalism should be given a real chance.
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