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This book explores the transformative role of social media in fostering reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia, a region still grappling with unresolved conflicts and ethnic divides. Focusing on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it highlights how Balkan influencers blend personal storytelling with commercial outreach to promote interethnic understanding. The study employs digital ethnography and narrative analysis to reveal the intricate dynamics between human actors and algorithms, uncovering how social media facilitate grassroots reconciliation initiatives. The author critiques traditional reconciliation efforts driven by political elites and emphasises the potential of bottom-up approac...
"While changes related to cultural diversity are visible and at work in social, cultural and political contexts, cultural diversity as such is being ignored or rejected across many countries. It is the denial or hidden nature of diversity in educational settings and learning processes, reflected in the marginalisation of this topic, that this book wants to address. The book chapters are blind peer reviewed and draw from a variety of learning settings across the world. They are intended to open up spaces to talk, promote and struggle for the relevance of addressing learning diversities. This includes current and new directions for theoretical and methodological discussions. They concern spaces of interaction and diversity research across single and multiple moments, different contexts and various time scales. They also explore the diversity of theories used to address these issues and how we theorize the relationship between centres and margins in understanding the idea of opening spaces for dialogue."
This book explores the long-term impact on democracy and institution-building in post-conflict and transitory societies, stemming from the political integration of former combatants of intra-state armed groups. By providing a comparative analysis on two countries with certain commonalities but also sufficient differences to warrant an intriguing comparison – Kosovo and North Macedonia – the author undertakes an examination of their respective political trajectories with a focus on the role of combatants turned politicians. Revolving around the concepts of democracy and political inclusion versus clientelism, corruption, and institutional capture, the objective is to shed light on the correlation between the inclusion of former combatants in politics, democratisation and institution-building, and the perpetuation of clientelist behavior and other illicit phenomena. In so doing, the book explores the novel concept of democracy spoilers in transitory societies. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of democracy, nation-building, institution-building, and security studies.
Discusses Serbia's struggle for democratic values after the fall of the Milošević regime provoked by the NATO war, and after the trauma caused by the secession of Kosovo. Are the value systems of the post-Milošević era true stumbling blocks of a delayed transition of this country? Seventeen contributors from Norway, Serbia, Italy, Germany, Poland and some other European countries covered a broad range of topics in order to provide answers to this question. The subjects of their investigations were national myths and symbols, history textbooks, media, film, religion, inter-ethnic dialogue, transitional justice, political party agendas and other related themes. The authors of the essays represent different scholarly disciplines whose theoretical conceptions and frameworks are employed in order to analyze two alternative value systems in Serbia: liberal, cosmopolitan and civic on the one hand, and traditional, provincial, nationalist on the other.
This book explores how the critical discursive breakthrough of social movements in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia disrupted the post-socialist transitional status quo. While critical ideas have long fueled social and political actions, the specifics of their relationship with activism have received limited scholarly attention. This book discusses the emergence of new left actors through the lens of a maturation of consciousness, rather than the opening of structural or other “windows of opportunity,” suggesting the potential for such actors to emerge stemmed from the exposure of a segment of the populace to critical ideas. Questions surrounding the relevance of different typ...
Psychology of Music is a flourishing area of research in the Western Balkans. However, much of its findings and insights have remained relatively unknown outside the region. Psychological Perspectives on Musical Experiences and Skills features recent research from the Western Balkans, foregrounding its specific topics, methods, and influences, and bringing it into productive conversation with complementary research from Western Europe and further afield. The essays in this collection investigate the psychology of listening and performance and their relevance to music practice. Employing a range of research methodologies, they address divergent themes, from a cross-cultural understanding of a...
In 1902, an illegitimate daughter was born to Albert Einstein. In 1903, she vanished. Now, almost a century later, Michele Zackheim follows a mystery that has bewildered Einstein scholars the world over.