This thesis investigates the diverse ways in which social agents construct the relationship between past, present and future through a study of historical consciousness and its role in the negotiation of identity and shifting power relations in the border region of Southwest Serbia. The focus of the research falls on ethnic relations between Serbs and Bosniaks, who predominantly inhabit the area, and the boundaries that they imagine surround the world they live in. The goal has been to trace the life of these ethnic boundaries, and with it the relationships between those who imagine them by following their transformations in history, as well as to inquire into elements of social patterns that may be discernable within a contextualized and historicized analysis of the region. In order to achieve this, I have analysed the diverse pasts and futures that coalesce in the many 'time spaces' that Southwest Serbia's social actors inhabit in any present moment and from which they (re)construct these boundaries and their identities. The research has been situated within the wider anthropological discussion about the relation of culture (memory) and history and draws on insights made by relevant studies and ethnographies conducted on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The data presented demonstrates that ethnicity and nationality are not fully crystalized as concepts in Southwest Serbia, their contents are imagined in inconsistent ways in and between social groups, while ethno-national identities and histories are not on the whole felt to be crucial to one's personal sense of self, but are perceived and put to use as malleable political resources. As a result, the most dominant allegiance in Southwest Serbia is to one's family, the only group whose 'essence' escapes political malleability and whose members share a common cross-temporal vision.

xi, 189 p. / Human rights advocates have championed the establishment of a regime of international legal accountability for grave violations of human rights, including genocide. Despite recent advances in establishing a regime of responsibility for individuals, when the International Court of Justice pronounced its 2007 judgment on the first case of state responsibility for genocide, Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, it exonerated Serbia of the most serious charges. Key to the Court's judgment was its spatialized definition of genocide as 'destruction in part' and its acceptance of Serbia's calculated strategy of legal immunization of establishing the Bosnian territory it sought to annex as a formally separate political entity. Considering the Court's latitude of interpretation regarding these spatial and territorial factors in light of the law, this thesis argues that geopolitical considerations influenced a judgment that will greatly limit the future possibility of any state or individual being found responsible for genocide. / Committee in charge: Shaul Cohen, Co-Chair; Alexander B. Murphy, Co-Chair

The thesis examines Serbian conspiracy culture at the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. During the war, conspiratorial themes became a regular occurrence in Serbian mainstream media, as well as in pronouncements by the Serbian political establishment. For the most part, conspiratorial explanations focused on the machinations of transnational elite organisations such as the Bilderberg group or, more generally, on the conspiracy of 'the West'. However, conspiratorial accounts of the war occasionally invoked themes which were previously deemed to be beyond the boundaries of acceptable opinion, such as the allusion to a Jewish conspiracy or to the esoteric and occult aspects of the alleged plot. The thesis outlines the history of conspiracy theories in Serbia and critically reviews psychological approaches to understanding the nature of conspiracy theories. It suggests that the study of conspiratorial discourse requires the exploration of the rhetorical and argumentative structure of specific conspiratorial explanations, while paying special attention to the historical and ideological context within which these explanations are situated. The thesis is largely based upon the examination of the coverage of the war in the Serbian press. Recorded conversations with two well-known Serbian conspiracy theorists are also analysed. The study suggest that conspiratorial interpretations of the war drew upon a longstanding conspiracy tradition of explanation which has a strong anti-semitic legacy and is rooted in right-wing Christian ideology. Analytic chapters explore the discursive and ideological dynamics by which the anti-semitic and mystical aspects of the conspiracy tradition emerged briefly in Serbian mainstream media and political discourse. The thesis concludes by examining the status of conspiracy theories in Serbia in the aftermath of the political changes in October 2000.

Why Serbia’s path towards EU membership has been so contentious and fraught with difficulty? Why did Europeanization happen more ‘smoothly’ in some countries, while it stalls or fails in others? This study shows Serbia’s reluctance to Europeanize by exploring how the Serbian ruling elite received the EU’s norms of peace, media freedom and rights of migrants and refugees. As such, it contributes to the emerging research agenda on norm diffusion and Normative Power Europe. Through an analysis of key public statements of Serbian political leaders over the past four years, the present thesis examines how politicians discursively framed EU’s ideas, standards and normative convictions within the Belgrade-Pristina normalization dialogue, in light of the refugee crisis and in terms of media freedom. The findings indicate that the Serbian governing elite has responded differently to the EU’s normative influence in different policy domains with resisting and rejecting certain norms while adopting and adapting other. In general, the thesis evaluates that despite the significant efforts of the EU to export its ideas and values, it has only had a limited effect on Serbia. I conclude that these results further cast doubt on the future of Serbia’s accession to the EU.

The Balkans has suffered from quite a few problems as a result of the countless ambitious endeavors for great states of the ethnic groups residing in the Peninsula. The most recent great state idea to have caused troubles in the region is the Serbs’ Great Serbia (i.e. Yugoslvia), which caused a cycle of wars, the latest one being the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s. This thesis attempts to evaluate the rumors of yet another great state in the making – or rather awakening again: the attempt at a Greater Albania, and whether the Albanians in the Balkans are still harboring the idea of any such state. Particular emphasis is placed upon the following questions:   Where does the idea of a Greater Albania stem from? Is a Greater Albania today still on the Albanians’ agenda as a real political plan? What speaks for and against a Greater Albania? Is the idea even feasible?   The findings indicate that none of the Albanian communities residing in the Balkan region wish for a Greater Albania, nor do their leaders. The Serbs nonetheless maintain that an Albanian threat exists and has done so ever since 1878 when the idea of a Greater Albania first arose. However, according to the results of this study, their claims lack credibility. Everything indicates that today, and with Albania striving for membership in the European Union, the idea of a Greater Albania has been left in the past.

Despite deficient institutional practices, political resistance, and lagging public support for European Union (EU) membership, as well as the presence of two existential EU crises—the euro crisis and migration crisis—, the states of Southeast Europe (SEE) continue to adapt their domestic policies, procedures, legislation, norms and values to the EU’s acquis communautaire—Europeanization. The Europeanization literature explains that such processes of adaption are induced by incentives, and informed by the (limited) ability of each state to negotiate its membership requirements. However, given the degree of political and institutional weakness in SEE, in addition to the EU’s current apathetic stance towards enlargement, this dissertation questions the explanatory power of traditional, hierarchical conceptualizations of Europeanization. It in turn investigates the extent to which the EU and Southeast European candidates (SEECs) have employed new, ‘horizontal’ mechanisms of Europeanization that rely on cooperation, learning, and the co-production of outputs to overcome the technical and strategic problems facing the candidates. Very little work has acknowledged Europeanization outside of the traditional top-down-bottom-up dichotomy, and even less has attempted to specify and investigate the impact of these alternative mechanisms of Europeanization. To address this gap in the literature, this study traces incidents of civil servant cooperation (twinning) and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) involvement in Croatia and Serbia, and assesses to what degree these mechanisms have helped Croatia and Serbia comply with the acquis. It argues that while the effectiveness of these mechanisms vary due to a number of factors, they have been vital to the accession processes of Croatia and Serbia. These mechanisms have helped align domestic and EU legislation, improved institutional procedures, fostered inter-ministry cooperation, updated policy frameworks, extended state programs to rural and minority populations, and encouraged more systematic public consultation, all of which have been deemed a necessary part of membership preparations. More broadly, these findings suggest a shift in EU-candidate state relations, and demonstrate that a more diverse set of actors and mechanisms are active in Europeanization and governance processes. In candidate states, and indeed even in some member states with weak institutional capacities, tense political environments, and an uncertain public, mechanisms that rely solely on conditionality have varied in their ability to induce domestic compliance. This dissertation contends that horizontal mechanisms that rely on socialization instead of coercion, may present a worthwhile alternative. / Graduate / crouchgb@uvic.ca

The focus of this study is the underground music scene in Belgrade, Serbia. This work requires the exploration of varied cultural and market factors that have shaped the scene, resulting in its present form. The explored phenomenon is complex and achieving the necessary depth of analysis will involve the use of a wide set of theoretical sources and research methods. The fieldwork includes in-depth interviews, reflective accounts of longitudinal participant observation, data collected through email correspondence, and a large amount of documentary data. Data analysis will be articulated into a single methodology (examined in depth in Chapter 3).

Afin de circonscrire l'objet de recherche proposée, quelques éclaircissements sur les confins historiques et géographiques du sujet étudié sont nécessaires.Du point de vue historique, la période concernée commence à la fin des années 80, avec la chute du communisme, qui est pratiquement le moment à partir duquel est posée la question de la réintégration européenne des États de la région. Cependant, il conviendra de faire quelques investigations dans l'histoire du 20ème siècle, voire même auparavant, afin de comprendre certaines caractéristiques de la région. Par exemple, la problématique du Kosovo ne peut être comprise sans connaître son passé et la valeur symbolique de cette région considérée par les Serbes comme leur berceau historique.Du point de vue géographique, la carte politique des Balkans est controversée. Toutefois, si l’on considère le Danube comme la limite nordique de la région, certains pays ont leur territoire tout entier inclus dans la région balkanique (cas de l'Albanie, la Bosnie-Herzégovine, la Bulgarie, la Macédoine, le Monténégro, la Grèce). Mais, il y en a d’autres dont le territoire - soit en entier, soit une partie - se trouve au nord du Danube (tels la Croatie, la Roumanie, la Serbie, la Slovénie) ou même en dehors de l’Europe (la Turquie). Pour délimiter plus clairement les pays qui feront l’objet de cette recherche, on utilisera comme critère de démarcation l'histoire de l'intégration européenne des vingt dernières années. Ainsi la Grèce, bien que membre de l’UE depuis 1989, fera-t-elle aussi l’objet de cette recherche du fait de la pertinence, pour la future politique de conditionnalité, du cas de suspension de l’accord, décidée par la CEE à l’époque du Régime des Colonels. Dans ces conditions, les pays concernés de façon collatérale par cette recherche recouvrent toutes les étapes possibles de l’intégration :- des Etats qui sont déjà membres de l’UE, tels la Slovénie (depuis 2004), la Bulgarie et la Roumanie (depuis 2007) et la Croatie (à partir de 2013);- des Etats auxquels l’UE a accordé le statut officiel d’Etat-candidat, tels la Macédoine, le Monténégro, la Turquie et la Serbie;- des Etats bénéficiant du statut d’Etat-candidat potentiel, tels l’Albanie, la Bosnie-Herzégovine, le Kosovo / N order to circumscribe the proposed research, some clarification of the historical and geographical boundaries of the subject is needed.From the historical point of view, the period begins in the late 1980s, with the fall of communism, which is practically the moment from which the question of the European reintegration of the States of the region is asked. However, it will be necessary to make some investigations in the history of the 20th century, and even before, in order to understand certain characteristics of the region. For example, the problem of Kosovo can not be understood without knowing its past and the symbolic value of this region considered by the Serbs as their historical cradle. From a geographical point of view, the political map of the Balkans is controversial. However, if one considers the Danube as the northern boundary of the region, some countries have their entire territory included in the Balkan region (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece). But there are others whose territory - either in their entirety or part - lies in the northern part of the Danube (such as Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia) or even outside Europe ( Turkey). To demarcate more clearly the countries that will be the subject of this research, the history of European integration over the last twenty years will be used as a demarcation criterion. Thus Greece, although a member of the EU since 1989, will also be the subject of this research because of the relevance for the future conditionality policy of the suspension of the agreement, decided by EEC at the time of the Regime of Colonels. Under these conditions, the countries concerned in a collateral fashion by this research cover all possible stages of integration:- States which are already members of the EU, such as Slovenia (since 2004), Bulgaria and Romania (since 2007) and Croatia (from 2013);- States to which the EU has granted the official status of candidate state, such as Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey and Serbia;- States enjoying the status of potential candidate states, such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo

The dissertation studies feminist knowledge production through translation in the context of post-communist Eastern Europe. It focuses on one case study, the Serbian translation of the American feminist health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) through the lens of the politics of translation and reproduction. The translation, Naša tela, mi (NTM), was published by a group of feminist activists from the Autonomous Women’s Centre (AWC) in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001. By focusing on this one case study, my dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of the political, social, linguistic, and feminist dimensions implicated in the transfer of a Western feminist project from one geopolitical location to another, to a post-socialist, post-conflict Eastern European country in the 1990s. Against the background of the Yugoslav wars and the influence of ethno-nationalism in the 1990s, I examine the development of domestic and transnational feminist networking, including the Belgrade feminists’ work with victims of domestic and sexual violence and refugees. I assess the extent to which NTM serves as oppositional discourse to the changing politics of reproduction and pronatalist discourses around abortion and fertility in Serbia in this period. Furthermore, I analyze NTM’s contribution to local feminist knowledge on women’s reproductive health, rights, and sexuality. I emphasize the importance of the local context, including the history of abortion access and traditional gender relations. Methodologically, the dissertation is based on interview data, archival documents, and comparative textual analysis. The dissertation draws attention to feminist knowledge production across uneven geopolitical borders, translation flows across the East-West divide, and the role of English in transnational feminist networking. The dissertation brings together the politics of translation and the politics of reproduction and calls for further studies into the role of translation in transnational feminist patterns of knowledge production.

The thesis analyzes the banking sectors in selected countries of CEE region, in particular in Albania, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina and compares their development with the Czech Republic as it is CEE country with one of the most advanced banking sectors in the region. Three parts of the paper analyzing separately each of the countries are supplemented by country comparison and final conclusions. General development, development of banking sector as well as banking market and financial performance of banks are examined. As a conclusion, all the countries develop in a different way and with different starting conditions. Albania relies more on qualitative development with low absolute figures but high relative indicators with respect to the utilization of available resources. The development in Serbia is rather quantitative, in contrary to the situation in Albania. Bosnia and Herzegovina is progressing quite ambiguously also due to uncertain political situation in the country. It can be also concluded that all the three countries still have to go a long way to reach comparable level of their banking systems with the Czech Republic.