Ethnic Times

Kecmanovic deals with the phenomenon of ethnonationalism, both as a broad, worldwide concern and as a key ingredient to the struggles in the former Yugoslavia. As in the former Yugoslavia, the rise of ethnonationalistic sentiments and attitudes coincided with the transition from a state-and party-run affair to a new, post-communist type of government and society. Drawing upon his personal experiences in Sarajevo, Kecmanovic provides a unique view of the conflict.

In a style accessible to students and general readers, he traces the transformations of leading principles, value systems, behavioral patterns, and views of people in times of severe ethnic tensions. At times nearly novelistic, the book examines epidemic ethnonationalism and individual manifestations such as violence toward members of other groups, beliefs that ethnic differences are genetic, a need to aggrandize and even manufacture differences between communities.

Provides a firsthand view of ethnonationalism among people of the three major ethnonational groups in the former Yugoslavia.

DUSAN KECMANOVIC is formerly professor of psychiatry and political psychology at Sarajevo University. He has published extensively in the field of social psychiatry, social pathology, and the psychology of ethnonationalism.