Euroacademia Conferences
- Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (9th Edition) April 24 - 25, 2020
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (9th Edition) June 12 - 13, 2020
- 8th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again January 24 - 25, 2020
- Re-Inventing Eastern Europe (7th Edition) December 13 - 14, 2019
- The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (8th Edition) October 25 - 26, 2019
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (8th Edition) June 28 - 29, 2019
- The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (7th Edition) January 25 - 26, 2019
- 7th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again November 23 - 24, 2018
- Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (8th Edition) September 28 - 30, 2018
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (7th Edition) June 14 - 15, 2018
The Genealogy of the Construction and Stigmatization of the Other: The Case of Orthodox Serbs and South Slavic Muslims
-
-
Presentation speakers
- Ivan Ejub Kostić, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia
- Download presentation
Abstract:
The process of constructing an individual or a group as the Other, and their subsequent stigmatization, is simply not possible if there are no stigmatizers. During the entire history of humankind, the society played a decisive role in the construction of those “traits that are believed to be normal and natural”, that is socially acceptable, because “not all undesirable traits are questionable, but rather only those that are contrary to our stereotypes about what a certain type should be like”. With such an approach, the society creates not only socially acceptable patterns, but also those that are unacceptable. In other words, the society thus defines what are the traits that make a person “besmirched, ritually tarnished, that is, a person that should be avoided”. Concurrently with the stated process, the society develops an ideology, which serves to indicate to the rest of the population that undesirable traits of “besmirched” persons are inferior, and to point out that they are potentially dangerous. It is of crucial importance to successfully elaborate such an ideology because it serves to provide “rationalisation of its hostile attitude”, which is the final step in the process of stigmatization of the Other. It is precisely on this basis that, from the very beginning, Orthodox Christians have perceived South Slav Muslims in a very negative way, as “besmirched, ritually tarnished” people due to the fact that they decided to adopt Islam as their religion, whereby they committed a deadly sin by renouncing the faith of their forefathers and opted for the faith of the “invaders” from the Ottoman Empire. In this paper, we will try to identify the point in time when the South Slav Muslims were actually defined as the archetypical Other. After that, the aim of this paper will be to provide a detailed analysis of the genealogy of the development of an ideology which served to rationalise its hostile attitude, which eventually, on a number of occasions in recent history, resulted in genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the South Slav Muslims.
Related Presentations