Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States
Author(s): Vjekoslav Perica (Author)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
- Publication Date: 26 Feb. 2004
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 372 pages
- ISBN-10: 9780195174298
- ISBN-13: 9780195174298
Book Description
Reporting from the heartland of Yugoslavia in the 1970s, Washington Post correspondent Dusko Doder described "a landscape of Gothic spires, Islamic mosques, and Byzantine domes." A quarter century later, this landscape lay in ruins. In addition to claiming tens of thousands of lives, the former Yugoslavia's four wars ravaged over a thousand religious buildings, many purposefully destroyed by Serbs, Albanians, and Croats alike, providing an apt architectural metaphor for the region's recent history.
Rarely has the human impulse toward monocausality--the need for a single explanation--been in greater evidence than in Western attempts to make sense of the country's bloody dissolution. From Robert Kaplan's controversial Balkan Ghosts, which identified entrenched ethnic hatreds as the driving force behind Yugoslavia's demise to NATO's dogged pursuit and arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the quest for easy answers has frequently served to obscure the Balkans' complex history. Perhaps most surprisingly, no book has focused explicitly on the role religion has played in the conflicts that continue to torment southeastern Europe.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Vjekeslav Perica brilliantly recounts the role of religious narratives, institutions, organizations, and, most importantly, church or religious authorities both in constituting the three dominant identities of Yugoslavs and, in turn, in appropriating those narratives and identities for the destruction of the Yugoslav state and the possibility of civic and civil life in it.... Fundamentalism is the enemy of all that makes democracies functional and civility possible, whether in secular, religious, nationalist, patriotic, or ethnic clothing. Perica's contribution to our understanding of this phenomenon is immense."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"Vjekoslav Perica's masterfully written and extensively researched book fills an important gap in the historical scholarship on twentieth century southeastern Europe."-- Association of Contemporary Church Historians
Review
The first explicit look at the role religion has played in the tragedy of southeastern Europe
Review
"Vjekeslav Perica brilliantly recounts the role of religious narratives, institutions, organizations, and, most importantly, church or religious authorities both in constituting the three dominant identities of Yugoslavs and, in turn, in appropriating those narratives and identities for the destruction of the Yugoslav state and the possibility of civic and civil life in it.... Fundamentalism is the enemy of all that makes democracies functional and civility possible, whether in secular, religious, nationalist, patriotic, or ethnic clothing. Perica's contribution to our understanding of this phenomenon is immense."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"Vjekoslav Perica's masterfully written and extensively researched book fills an important gap in the historical scholarship on twentieth century southeastern Europe."-- Association of Contemporary Church Historians
About the Author
A former reporter for the Croatian weekly Nedjeljna Dalmacija and Research Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and The United States Institute of Peace, Vjekoslav Perica is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of History at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Minnesota.
View on Amazon
Wow! eBook
