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Ethnic Violence in the Former Yugoslavia: From Myth to Reality (with Sandra Penic)

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Identity, Violence and Power

Part of the book series: Identity Studies in the Social Sciences ((IDS))

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Abstract

During the early post-Cold War era, to much of the Western public, the former Yugoslavia soon came to epitomise a representation of a world of ethnic rivalry and primitivism abruptly revealed by the lift of the Iron Curtain. Tito’s rule over Yugoslavia has sometimes been metaphorically depicted as a ‘lid on a cauldron’, eventually removed by Tito’s death and the mounting weakness of the regime during the 1980s. International media depictions of war in the former Yugoslavia have certainly played a pre-eminent role in entrenching and popularising the notion that ethnic conflicts are somehow part of a natural course of events. These simple perceptions contrast with the complexity that local populations experienced, especially during the early war period. Where the battles were fought in 1991 and 1992, things typically looked less black and white.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Similarly, in the comparative data set which we used in this research (TRACES), collective guilt acceptance is higher among Bosniaks in Bosnia than Croats in Croatia, although the former group was on average more exposed to the war victimisation. In contrast, Macedonians show lower collective guilt acceptance than both of the previous groups, although they are on average less victimised.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Guy Elcheroth

  2. School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Stephen Reicher

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  1. Guy Elcheroth
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  2. Stephen Reicher
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Elcheroth, G., Reicher, S. (2017). Ethnic Violence in the Former Yugoslavia: From Myth to Reality (with Sandra Penic). In: Identity, Violence and Power. Identity Studies in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31728-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31728-5_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-230-27260-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31728-5

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