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JOUR 624 Cultural Studies:

Risk, Media and Identity in Kosovo
Lecturer: Isuf Berisha
MA candidate: Faton Raçi
30, August 2009

DOES ETHNIC IDENTITY MATTERS?

(The case of ethnic identity and nationalism in Former Yugoslav
Republics)

The best example of how the concept of belonging to certain ethnicity and its

political misuse at any cost can lead to unprecedented bloodshed is the Western Balkan,

respectively the Republics of Former Yugoslavia. In fact, the term ethnicity is closely

coupled with the disintegration processes of former Yugoslav Federation during the

period of 1990s. Ethnicity turned out to be the basic characteristics of its division,

separation, segregation, and secession. What’s more, ironically Balkans even nowadays

continues to maintain similar approach in “solving” ethnical dispute, as in case of the

name dispute between FYROM (which was back in 1990s considered as the only peace

heaven among all ex-Yugoslav Republics) and Greece. Fortunately, this time there’s no

use of force.

But why ethnicity and ethnic identity became suddenly so important for ex-

Yugoslav Republics back in 1990s? Why ethnicity and ethnic identity proved so

important in the country that was till then kind of a symbol of multi-ethnicity?
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Respectively, how it was in fact orchestrated by former leaders of former Yugoslav

Republics for achieving their political goals?

This essay tends to answer these questions through examination of few

definitions about these and similar issues, coupled with thoughts of few eminent

philosophers and theorists.

Ethnicity, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict

What is in fact ethnicity? Although lot of theorists have dealt with the issue of

definition of this term, James G. Kellas, Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow

simplifies it by stressing that ethnicity is nothing more that just a state of belonging to a

certain ethnic group1, of course based on its social or cultural characteristics. Richard P.

Jenkins, professor of Sociology and well-known anthropologist from the University of

Sheffield, on the other side provides quite detailed explanation. He emphasizes that

ethnicity in fact also depends on its social context, and it always interacts with

continuous processes of external and internal designation, self-identification and the

identification by the others. For Jenkins the external and internal definitions of ethnicity

are interlaced and dependant on each other, because they cannot be understood without

one another.2 Likewise, he also clarifies that the external definition – or the

categorization – is an important dimension of the internal definition. 3 Since, in cases of

mutual consent, the internal definition becomes confirmed; if there’s no consensus, then

one group imposes a name and categorization to another group which considerably

influences the social experience of the categorized.4 Hence, according to Jenkins society

1
Kellas J.G. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity, (Macmillan Press Ltd: London. Second Edition,
1998) p.6
2
Jenkins P. Richard, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations, (SAGE Publications: London,
1997), pp. 97, 127, 285
3
Ibid. p. 101
4
Ibid. p. 94
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and its categories are social constructs, while the identities are fluid and determined by

the situation – meaning that they are open to negotiations, as they’re simultaneously and

significantly influenced by external definition, the question of power and dominance.5

On the other hand ethnicity is highly linked to the concept of nationalism, since

its existence is based on a real - or assumed - ethnic tie. However, nationalism has more

ideological and political dimensions6, since it is usually (politically) referred as a desire of

people to maintain a self-governed political entity.

Nonetheless the real threat emerges when ethnicity becomes nationalist;

respectively when it becomes the main (or probably the only) identity tool for a certain

ethnic group, because then it may lead toward ethnic conflicts and bloodshed, as it was

the case in former Yugoslavia.

Consequently, it can be easily said that ethnicity and ethnic identity play an

important role in conflicts of that kind, as they can provide a power capable enough for

the emergence of nationalistic feelings, which can then be used by political elites for the

achievement of their political or other goals.

Manipulation with Ethnic Identities and the Rise of Nationalism in ex-SFRY

Although not unique, the case of Former Yugoslav Federation is particularly

interesting to be treated in the context of the misuse of ethnic identity for achieving

political goals. Yugoslavia was for almost half a century considered as a state with

superbly balanced inter-ethnical relations compared to other communist regimes.

Absurdly, it was the only state disintegrated with bloodshed; the biggest one after the

World War II.

5
Ibid. p. 91, 291
6
Kellas J.G. Ibid. p. 5
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Matter a fact, while being part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

(SFRY) none of its nations bother too much to think about the importance of their

individual ethnicity, as they all got strong impression of belonging to a joint nationality.

Furthermore, the slogan ‘united brotherhood’ seemed as a national ‘trade mark’ of

Yugoslavia. But, with the death of its President, Josip Broz Tito, and especially with the

appearance of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbian/Yugoslav political scene, everything proved

a huge disillusion. Instead of continuing to be identified as Yugoslavs, Milosevic had for

the first time publicly homogenized Serbian nation by camouflaging his real intent, the

conquest of other ex-Yugoslav territories through the “defense of Yugoslavia”, since,

according to Milosevic, Serbia had historical rights to other Yugoslav territories.

Consequently, the theretofore internal borders between ex-Yugoslav Republics were

nothing more than artificial administrative lines, which serves for division of Serbian

nation and its territories amongst other Federal Republics, enabling hence the others

(other Republics) to weaken Serbia and to get prepared for their secession.

In fact, Milosevic was trying to benefit from the disintegration of Socialist

Federative Republic of Yugoslavia by imposing the domination of Serbian ethnic group

toward the others - politically and economically. Therefore he insisted on continuity of

SFRY. For realization of such an intent Milosevic employed more or less complete

Serbian intellectual elite which accepted to act according to Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic

politics. Of course, his initiatives then triggered mobilization of other Yugoslav ethnic

groups, as they felt threatened by Milosevic’s politics and intentions. Subsequently, the

expulsion of the national minorities through ethnic cleansing of all “the others” from all

the territories claimed by the Serbs, Croats, or Bosnians followed subsequently. We all

know the rest of the story.

But back then it was still unclear how else the national territory that Milosevic,

and sometimes Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, talked about was to be defined and the
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boundaries of the nation have to be decided. Almost a decade later the same question

was raised by Anne-Marie Thiesse7, in her analytical text “Inventing National Identity”8,

which deals with very same problematic.

“Unlike monarchies and empires, nations cannot invoke the right of conquest.

Their claim to territory can be based only on ancestral rights of possession. A nation

worthy of the name can never admit to aggressive intentions towards its neighbors. It

always claims to be acting in defense of its inalienable heritage and right to freedom,

come good or ill (which is why nations sometimes commemorate their defeats as well as

their victories)” Thiesse emphasizes9. Thiesse’s claim certainly represents a very faithful

description of the leading logic of Milosevic’s establishment in 1990s.

On the other hand, Kanchan Chandra10, professor of Politics at the University of

New York, emphasizes that virtually almost all definitions, including Donald Horowitz’s

(“ethnicity” is an umbrella concept that “easily embraces groups differentiated by color,

language, and religion; it covers “tribes,” “races,” “nationalities,” and castes”) 11, agree

that descent is somehow an important “umbrella” in defining an ethnic group. Chandra

explains that the only differences are over how precisely to specify the role of descent,

and whether and how other features should be combined with it in defining ethnic

groups. Chandra underlines that the role of descent is specified as a common ancestry;

as a myth of common ancestry; as a myth of a common place of origin and as a “descent

rule” for membership. While, the features combined with descent include a common

7
Anne-Marie Thiesse is a professor at the EHESS in Paris and director of research at France’s prestigious
Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS) in the fields of cultural, literature, and social science.
She is the author of five books, most notably on the construction of national and European identity, the
Creation of National Identities, and on the strategic use of regionalism in the construction of French identity.
8
Le Monde Diplomatique Online, 17 June 1999, <http://mondediplo.com/1999/06/05thiesse> [accessed
on 12 July, 2009]
9
Ibid.
10
Chandra Kanchan, Forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science: What Is Ethnic Identity and
Does It Matter?, (New York, 2005) p. 6-7,
<http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/chandra/ars2005.pdf>
[accessed on 25 June 2009]
11
Horowitz Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p.53
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culture or language and a common history and conceptual autonomy.

If we thus consider Chandra’s definition, it becomes quite absurd to name the

wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as ethnic wars (as it was preferred to be

named by all main political leaders of the Serbs), because the vast majority of descent

characteristics were common for the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. Furthermore, when

tackling the issue of a ‘Common Region of Origin, or Myth of a Common Region of

Origin’, a claim which was very widely used during and after the conflicts in ex-

Yugoslavia, Chandra asserts that:

The claim that ethnic groups are defined by association with a

homeland holds up only when we take the groups in question as given and

go backward in time, stopping at exactly the point at which the ancestors

of the two groups are found in separate geographical regions. Serbs and

Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, for instance are

now associated with distinct homelands, in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.

But going back in time simply to the 9th century, we might have thought of

all three groups as possessing a common homeland in the South Slav

regions, and so to be one, not three ethnic groups.12

If this assertion is correct, then why the ethnic background suddenly became so

important for until yesterday ‘brotherly united’ ex-Yugoslav Republics?

Gradual disappearance of the old and cozy feeling of belonging to the same

nationality/statehood during the SFRY, fear of being left without clearly defined social,

political and cultural identity, as well as the sudden rebirth of forgotten national

consciousness and the re-interpretation of the so-called traditions, were just few of the

reasons that caused the initiation of the tendency for establishing the new nation-states,

which would then serve as kind of homogenous national communities formed within

12
Chandra Kanchan, Ibid, p. 10
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the territories of ex-Yugoslav Republics.

Inasmuch as according to Benedict Anderson, the nation “is an imagined

political community… It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation

will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in

the minds of each lives the image of their communion...”13, Milosevic’s ethnic politics

thus needed something more convincing for claiming the historical rights of Serbian

ethnic group toward the neighboring territories. Eric Hobsbawm14 emphasizes the

relevance of ‘invention of tradition’ for the modern innovation, the ‘nation’, and the

associated ethnic phenomenon’s nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols,

histories and the rest in its construction15. Thus, according to Hobsbawm, “the national

phenomenon cannot be adequately investigated without careful attention to the

‘invention of tradition’.” Consequently Milosevic, as well as other leaders of ex-Yugoslav

Republics in 1990s, needed to invent his/their ethnic traditions, in order to provide a

valid argumentation for his/their doings and for the homogenization of his/their

compatriots gathered around “the cause”.

Certainly, all these elements were carefully coordinated with the extensive media

propaganda from almost all respective republican TV channels. Elihu Katz and Paul

Lazarsfeld have in 1955 published a book about media influence based on data’s

collected during 1945. Their book, Personal Influence, mainly treats the issue of media

influence towards the stances and thinking of public, especially its political stance and

behavior during specific political activities, such as election for instance.

All studies on communications rarely tend to study the influences of the

media; although the mass media can have lots of influence of different

kind in the society. Therefore it’s possible to make a classification of

13
Anderson Benedict, Imagined Communities, (Verso: London, New York, 1991) p.6-7
14
Hobsbawm Eric, Introduction: Inventing Tradition, (Cambridge University Press, Edited by Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Renger, 1983) p. 14
15
Ibid.
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different sociological dimensions and influences.16

And it was exactly this kind of influence that was masterly used by Yugoslav

political leaders of 1990s for their personal promotion, for gaining sympathies and

support needed for the realization of their ideas and aspirations, as well as for

recruitment of necessary paramilitary forces needed for the achievement of those

aspirations. Moreover, as Slavuj Zizek puts it, “every participant in the bloody

disintegration (of Yugoslavia) tries to legitimize their place “inside” by presenting

themselves as the last bastion of European civilization (the current ideological

designation for the capitalist “inside”) in the face of oriental barbarism.”17 Even though

Zizek also emphasizes that “it should now be clear who, within ex-Yugoslavia,

effectively behaves in the civilized, European way: those at the very bottom of this

ladder, excluded from belonging to the “developed” — the Muslim Bosnians and

Albanians. And today they are paying for it.”18 This Zizek’s remark, in my opinion,

explains a lot the issue of manipulation with the ethnicity and ethnic identity, because

only these two Yugoslav constitutional units lacked their own independent media and

were, therefore, punished by “the civilized” ones, who have managed to complete the

environment they’ve targeted. The bloodshed that has followed was the only possible

consequence of such acting.

What remained the biggest paradox (and that was the main reason why I choose

to deal only with this issue, without tackling the conflict between the Serbs and Kosovo

Albanians) is that all three antagonized nations, the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnians

in fact shared the same essential cultural condition which determines ethnic belonging

or nationhood – the language. They in fact could and still can easily communicate

16
Katz Elihu & Lazarsfeld F. Paul, Personal Influence: The Part Played By People In The Flow Of Mass
Communications,( Elmo Roper, 1955) p. 124
17
Zizek Slavoj, Ethnic Dance Macabre, The Guardian Manchester (UK), Aug 28, 1992;
<http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-ethnic-danse-macabre.html> [accessed on 20 July, 2009]
18
Ibid
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between themselves without any need of translation whatsoever. Bearing in mind this

fact, ethnicity in former Yugoslavia for sure doesn’t refer to language, the most common

marker of ethnic identity in Eastern Europe. As Mark Mazower explains, it is not even

an issue of any biological or physical differences, since Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians are

apparently descended from the same Slavic tribes. Therefore, it is somewhat acceptable

to claim that the primary criterion of ethnic identity is religion. Nevertheless, even

religion can hardly be considered as the main cause of the fighting, even if it has

provided useful symbols for the mobilization of the masses.19

Consequently, is it then logical that all this bloodshed was in fact caused

purposely by these respective politicians, who served the card of protection of ethnicity

toward their compatriots, even though their main goal was gaining as much territory as

possible from their future neighboring states? Obviously, ethnicity was by them simply

seen as a mean for achieving their political and territorial pretensions.

Conclusion

Tito’s regime suppressed diverse ethnic identities of the Yugoslavs, trying to

create a unique Yugoslav identity based on a kind of hyper-identity element, such as

brotherhood unity, while aiming to show the union of the Yugoslavs regardless of their

ethnical background. The problem was that Yugoslav Republics and Provinces were

never ethnically homogeneous. Even though in all of them different ethnic groups lived

peacefully they’ve had diverse ethnic descent or were originating from mixed marriages.

The situation suddenly became tensed and antagonistic in 1990s, when ethnicity and

ethnic identity became priority compared to “the old” one - the Yugoslav national

identity. Actually, the political leaders found the disintegration of the Eastern Block as a
19
Mazower Mark, Ethnicity and War in the Balkans, (University of Sussex, National Humanities Center),
<http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/publications/hongkong/mazower.htm> [accessed on 22 July, 2009]
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good opportunity for transforming Yugoslavia into few small independent nation-states.

Ethnicity hence became the most prevalent element of the group’s identification, and the

role of the political elites crucial, as they perceived it as an important instrument for

realization of their political plans. “New” ethnic identities were therefore not an

accidental occurrence that had happened simultaneously with the fall of Eastern Block,

but a political necessity for achieving certain goals.

Conclusively, wars between former Yugoslav Republics had strongly confirmed

that the issues like national/ethnic and religious belonging, nationalism, and ethnic

conflicts were carefully calculated. They were tools in the hands of politicians.

Hereupon, as Mazower emphasizes, the appropriate question to be answered is not why

the ethnicity so suddenly mattered for Yugoslav Republics and Provinces, but why things

changed with the emergence of the new political configuration following the collapse of

communist regime in Yugoslavia and the ethnicity/nationalism became the key to

politics. “The proper places to look may be in the centers of political power in Belgrade,

Zagreb, or elsewhere rather then the villages and mountains of “traditional Balkan

society.””20

I tend to believe the same thing, since the ex-Yugoslav politicians, as well as the

passive policy of Europe made it possible for the ethnicity to matter, and to continue to

matter even in the nowadays Balkans.

20
Ibid
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

- Anderson Benedict, Imagined Communities, (Verso: London, New York, 1991)

- Chandra Kanchan, Forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science: What Is

Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?, (New York, 2005)
<http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/chandra/ars2005.pdf> [accessed on
25 June 2009]

- Hobsbawm Eric, Introduction: Inventing Traditions, (Cambridge University Press,

Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Renger, 1983)

- Horowitz Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1985)

- Jenkins Richard, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations, (SAGE

Publications: London, 1997)

- Katz Elihu & Lazarsfeld F. Paul, Personal Influence: The Part Played By People In
The Flow Of Mass Communications, (Elmo Roper, 1955)

- Kellas J.G., The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity, (Macmillan Press Ltd:
London. Second Edition, 1998)

- Mazower Mark, Ethnicity and War in the Balkans, (University of Sussex, National
Humanities Center)
<http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/publications/hongkong/mazower.htm>
[accessed on 22 July, 2009]

- Thiesse Anne-Marie, Inventing National Identity, Le Monde Diplomatique Online, 17

June 1999, <http://mondediplo.com/1999/06/05thiesse> [accessed on 12 July, 2009]

- Zizek Slavoj, Ethnic Dance Macabre, The Guardian Manchester (UK), Aug 28, 1992;
<http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-ethnic-danse-macabre.html> [accessed on 20
July, 2009]