Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:20:37.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Serbia's Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution as Manipulation? A Cultural Alternative to the Elite-Centric Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Marko Grdešić
Marko Grdešić*
Affiliation:
Sociology, University of Wisconsin Madison
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why did nationalism and socialism combine during Serbia's “anti-bureaucratic revolution”? This article critiques the elite-centric approach prevalent in the literature and suggests a cultural argument instead. Three interconnected “elective affinities” brought nationalism and socialism together and separated them from a weak liberal alternative: (1) the emergence of bureaucracy as a “floating signifier”; (2) the search for enemies and a predilection for conspiracy theories; and (3) anti-intellectualism with special emphasis on the search for “one truth.” The elite-centric approach is assessed by looking at actors who, if the thesis is correct, should have been the least likely adopters of nationalist ideas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 774 - 803
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anzulović, Branimir. 1999. Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Bennett, Cristopher. 1995. Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Bieber, Florian, Galijaš, Armina, and Archer, Rory. 2014. Debating the End of Yugoslavia. Burlington: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Blagojević, Marina. 1996. Iseljavanje Srba sa Kosova: Trauma i/ili katarza. In Popov, Nebojša, ed., Srpska strana rata: Trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju. Belgrade: Republika, 232–64.Google Scholar
Blanuša, Nebojša. 2011. Teorije zavjera i hrvatska politička zbilja 1980–2007. Zagreb: Plejada.Google Scholar
Bogdanović, Bogdan. 1988. Mrtvouzice: Mentalne zamke staljinizma. Zagreb: August Cesarec.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalizing States in the Old ‘New’ Europe—and the New. Ethnic and Racial Studies 19, 2: 411–37.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bunce, Valerie. 1997. Conclusion: The Yugoslav Experience in Comparative Perspective. In Bunce, Valerie, Bokovoy, Melissa K., Irvine, Jill A., and Lilly, Carol S., eds., State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia 1945–1992. New York: St. Martin's Press, 345–67.Google Scholar
Čavoški, Kosta. 1975. Filzofija otvorenog društva: Politički liberalizam Karla Poppera. Belgrade: Filozofsko društvo Srbije.Google Scholar
Čavoški, Kosta. 1989. Revolucionarni makijavelizam. Belgrade: Rad.Google Scholar
Cohen, Lenard J. 1993. Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Lenard J. 2001. Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milošević. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Čolović, Ivan. 2000. Bordel ratnika. Belgrade: XX Vek.Google Scholar
Čolović, Ivan. 2002. The Politics of Symbols in Serbia: Essays in Political Anthropology. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Čolović, Ivan. 2011. Za njima smo išli pevajući: Junaci devedesetih. Zagreb: Pelago.Google Scholar
Ćosić, Dobrica. 1988. Stvarno i moguće. Zagreb, Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba.Google Scholar
Cvijić, Jovan. 1931. Balkansko poluostrvo i južnoslavenske zemlje. Belgrade: Privrednik.Google Scholar
Đilas, Milovan. 1990. Nesavršeno društvo. Belgrade: Narodna knjiga.Google Scholar
Dimitrijević, Nenad. 1999. Words and Death: Serbian Nationalist Intellectuals. In Bozoki, Andras, ed., Intellectuals and Politics in Central Europe. New York: Central European University Press, 119–50.Google Scholar
Đinđić, Zoran. 1988. Jugoslavija kao nedovršena država. Novi Sad: Književna zajednica Novog Sada.Google Scholar
Doder, Duško and Branson, Louise. 1999. Milošević: Portrait of a Tyrant. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Dragović-Soso, Jasna. 2002. Saviours of the Nation: Serbia's Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Dragović-Soso, Jasna. 2008. Why Did Yugoslavia Disintegrate? An Overview of Contending Explanations. In Cohen, Lenard and Dragović-Soso, Jasna, eds., State Collapse in South-Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on Yugoslavia's Disintegration. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1–39.Google Scholar
Đukić, Slavoljub. 1989. Čovek u svom vremenu: Razgovori sa Dobricom Ćosićem. Belgrade: Filip Višnjić.Google Scholar
Đukić, Slavoljub. 1990. Slom srpskih liberala. Belgrade: Filip Višnjić.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 1990. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social Text 25–26: 56–80.Google Scholar
Gagnon, V. P. 2004. The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gagnon, V. P. 2010. Yugoslavia in 1989 and After. Nationalities Papers 38, 1: 23–39.Google Scholar
Gerschenkron, Alexander. 1962. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grdešić, Marko. 2013. Javno mnijenje, radnička klasa i raspad Jugoslavije. Revija za sociologiju 43, 2: 159–81.Google Scholar
Hayden, Robert M. 1999. Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. 1963. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L. 2000 [1985]. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Howe, Richard H. 1978. Max Weber's Elective Affinities: Sociology within the Bounds of Pure Reason. American Journal of Sociology 84, 2: 366–85.Google Scholar
Jelić, Ivan. 1979. Jugoslavenska socijalistička revolucija, 1941–1945. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.Google Scholar
Jovanov, Neca. 1979. Radnički štrajkovi u SFRJ od 1958. do 1969. godine. Beograd: Zapis.Google Scholar
Jovanov, Neca. 1983. Dijagnoza samoupravljanja. Zagreb: SNL.Google Scholar
Jovanov, Neca. 1989. Sukobi: Protagonisti latentnih i otvorenih društvenih konflikata. Nikšić: Univerzitetska riječ.Google Scholar
Jović, Dejan. 2009. Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
Jowitt, Kenneth. 1992. New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Robert. 1994. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Koštunica, Vojislav and Čavoški, Kosta. 1983. Stranački pluralizam ili monizam: Društveni pokreti i politički sistem u Jugoslaviji, 1944–1949. Belgrade: Institut društvenih nauka, Univerzitet u Beogradu.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason. London: Verso.Google Scholar
LeBor, Adam. 2004. Milosevic: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Little, Allan and Silber, Laura. 1995. The Death of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Lowinger, Jake. 2009. Economic Reform and the “Double Movement” in Yugoslavia: An Analysis of Labor Unrest and Ethno-Nationalism in the 1980s. PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Lowinger, Jake. 2013. Jugoslavija se raspala zbog mjera MMF-a, nacionalizmi su tek posljedica. Novosti 706. At: http://arhiva.portalnovosti.com/2013/06/jake-lowinger-jugoslavija-se-raspala-zbog-mjera-mmf-a-nacionalizmi-su-tek-posljedica (accessed 5 Mar. 2016).Google Scholar
Lučić, Dejan. 1988. Tajne albanske mafije. Beograd: Kosmos.Google Scholar
Lukić, Reneo and Lynch, Allen. 1996. Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Malešević, Siniša. 2004. Ideologija, legitimnost i nova država: Jugoslavija, Srbija i Hrvatska. Zagreb: Jesenski i Turk.Google Scholar
Maliqi, Shkelzen. 2007. Osam svetlosnih godina daleko. In Lekić, Slaviša and Pavić, Zoran, eds., VIII. sednica CK SK Srbije: Nulta tačka “narodnog pokreta.” Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 77–79.Google Scholar
Maliqi, Shkelzen. 2014. Kosovo i raspad Jugoslavije. Belgrade: Links.Google Scholar
Marković, Mihailo and Cohen, R. S.. 1975. Yugoslavia: The Rise and Fall of Socialist Humanism: A History of the Praxis Group. Nottingham: Spokesman Books.Google Scholar
Mastnak, Tomaž. 1992. Vzhodno od raja: Civilna družba pod komunizmom in po njem. Ljubljana: Državna založba Slovenije.Google Scholar
McKinnon, Andrew M. 2010. Elective Affinities of the Protestant Ethic: Weber and the Chemistry of Capitalism. Sociological Theory 28, 1: 108–26.Google Scholar
Mertus, Julie. 1999. Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Milosavljević, Olivera. 1996. Zloupotreba autoriteta nauke. In Popov, Nebojša, ed., Srpska strana rata: Trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju. Belgrade: Republika, 306–16.Google Scholar
Mises, Ludwig von. 1944. Bureaucracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Musić, Goran. n.d. ‘They Came as Workers and Returned as Serbs’: The Role of Rakovica's Blue-Collar Workers in Serbian Social Mobilizations of the late 1980s. Forthcoming in Igor Duda, Paul Stubbs, and Rory Archer, eds., Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslavia. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Negt, Oskar and Kluge, Alexander. 1993. Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Pavić, Zoran. 2007. Olako shvaćena silina. In Lekić, Slaviša and Pavić, Zoran, eds., VIII. sednica CK SK Srbije: Nulta tačka “narodnog pokreta.” Belgrade: Službeni glasnik, 11–31.Google Scholar
Pavković, Aleksandar. 1998. From Yugoslavism to Serbism: The Serb National Idea 1986–1996. Nations and Nationalism 4, 4: 511–28.Google Scholar
Pavković, Aleksandar. 2000. The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Perica, Vejkoslav and Velikonja, Mitja. 2012. Nebeska Jugoslavija: Interakcija političkih mitologija i pop-kulture. Beograd: XX Vek.Google Scholar
Perović, Latinka. 1991. Zatvaranje kruga. Sarajevo: Svjetlost.Google Scholar
Pjanić, Zoran. 1987. Anatomija krize. Belgrade: Ekonomika.Google Scholar
Popov, Nebojša. 1989. Contra Fatum. Belgrade: Mladost.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1966. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Vol. 2. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Puhovski, Žarko. 1990. Socijalistička konstrukcija zbilje. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 1992. Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia: 1962–1991. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2004. Explaining the Yugoslav Meltdown, 1: For a Charm of Pow'rful Trouble, Like a Hell-Broth Boil and Bubble: Theories about the Roots of the Yugoslav Troubles. Nationalities Papers 32, 4: 731–63.Google Scholar
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2005. Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
SANU. 1988. Memorandum SANU (grupa akademika SANU o aktuelnim društvenim pitanjima u našoj zemlji). Naše teme 33, 1–2: 128–63.Google Scholar
Sell, Louis. 2002. Slobodan Milošević and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Phillip. 1960. The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics. Glencoe: Free Press.Google Scholar
Sher, Gerson S. 1977. Praxis: Marxist Criticism and Dissent in Socialist Yugoslavia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jack L. 2000. From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Sorić, Petar. 1981. Rječnik samoupravljanja. Zagreb: Informator.Google Scholar
Stanojević, Miroslav. 2003. Workers Power in Transition Economies: The Cases of Serbia and Slovenia. European Journal of Industrial Relations 9, 3: 283–301.Google Scholar
Tadić, Ljubomir. 1986. Da li je nacionalizam naša sudbina? Belgrade: Multiprint.Google Scholar
Tomašić, Dinko. 1937. Društveni razvitak Hrvata. Zagreb: Hrvatska naklada.Google Scholar
Vladisavljević, Nebojša. 2008. Serbia's Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milošević, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vujačić, Veljko. 2003. From Class to Nation: Left, Right, and the Ideological and Institutional Roots of Post-Communist ‘National Socialism.’ East European Politics and Societies 17, 3: 359–92.Google Scholar
Wachtel, Andrew. 1998. Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1976. Keywords. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Živković, Marko. 2012. Srpski sanovnik: Nacionalni imaginarijum u vreme Miloševića. Beograd: XX Vek.Google Scholar