Political Culture and Dialogue

After the devastating wars on the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in recent decades, we have observed that the (re)construction of national historiographies is also driving societies further and further apart. Despite the gloomy picture drawn in this publication, coming to terms with the region’s traumatic history could be an essential contribution to European unification. With this publication, we hope to provide an impulse to that end.

Taking up the challenge of understanding the urban commons in the context of the unique collective experience of Yugoslav real socialism, which attempted to implement an experimental system of self-management on the level of the entire society, represents an attempt to also recognize how this specific context reflects the concept of the new commons: what are the practices and forms of commons that have emerged in resistance to neoliberal capitalism on the periphery, but also - how do these commons communicate with the Yugoslav heritage.

Rarely, if ever, has a genocide been as normalized as the genocide against the Bosniaks. It is a process which began simultaneously with the genocide itself—not only with the expansive cover-up campaign of its perpetrators, but with the rhetorical onslaught of minimization undertaken by the international community.

The problem of civic, legal and political emancipation of Jews in 19th century European societies is one of the critical processes in modern European history. What was the status of Jews in 19th-century Principality of Serbia, and how does it compare to other countries in the broader European perspective? This brochure attempts to provide a concise answer to this question, emphasizing the singular position and role that the citizens of a town in Serbia played in the process of Jewish emancipation at one point in history.

The richness of the multilayered historical reality, the authentic multicultural context of everyday life and the specific regional peculiarities of Albanian-Serbian relations in Kosovo have been unjustly simplified for decades by being reduced to episodes of intense interethnic violence. Even a casual conversation with people from both ethnic communities in Kamenica, Gnjilane, Šilovo and Ranilug reveals a more complex picture of mutual relations. From the perspective of ordinary people, the memory of coexistence and a common life together, mutual respect and tolerance in socialist Yugoslavia and in the aftermath of the 1999 war in Kosovo prevails over the notions about ethnic distrust and ethnically motivated violence.

Twenty years on from the Kosovo War, the collective memory of both parties in the conflict remains burdened by myths and incontestable truths about what actually took place. The process of reconciliation and building longstanding peace is being undermined, primarily, by political elites in both countries, whose populist policies amplify the prejudices between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs. In this issue of Perspectives we aim to highlight the fact that Kosovo is not just a toponym, but a country burdened by its recent violent history, where common people are struggling to rebuild the broken societies that the conflict has left behind.

In the region, patriarchal, homophobic and exclusive tendencies are dominating, shaping a climate of intolerance, of exclusion, of the radical negation of all things humane and rational. The consequences are rigid defence mechanisms against progressive and secular approaches. Instead of modernity, instead of establishing welfare for all, the citizens are kept in a perpetual combat zone, from which hundreds of thousands are fleeing – without war – in order to find their happiness in work and life elsewhere, beyond the continuing radicalisation.