|
|
The Helsinki Committee organized a youth
seminar in Belgrade as part of the project “Contemporary Serbian
Identity in the 21st Century”, realized with the assistance of the
Foundation for an Open Society.
Participants in the seminar were university
students (philosophy, law, organizational sciences, and economy) and the
youth active in the human rights field, all of them eager to learn more
about the issue of identity.
Psychologist Žarko Korać delivered the
introductory lecture on identity forming and development. Participants
were particularly interested in his views about a society’s role in
identity shaping of individuals, and social roles individuals are
supposed to play under the identities imposed on them. Sociologist Srđan
Barišić addressed revitalization of religion and the origins of the
phenomenon, emphasizing the fall of the Berlin Wall as the point in
modern history that triggered it off. Speaking of religious differences
between ex-Yugoslav nations on the one hand, and their similarities on
the other, embodied in practically common language, cultural heritage,
ethnicities and the once common state, Barišić concluded, “It is very
difficult to establish a definite ethnically-based identity in a state
still searching for and identity of its own, while threatening the
identities of ‘others.”
Historian Milan Subotić spoke about Russian
identity discourses and their influence on Serbia. “Two basic types of
identity discourses in Russia are Slavophilism and Westernization,” said
Subotić. He also discussed the so-called theory of “the advantages of
backwardness” promoting the notion about a society’s lagging behind /the
developed world/ could be beneficial to it. “If you put the locomotive
of progress in the rear of a railroad train, it will only take you back
to the glorious past, rather than leading toward development and
prosperity.”
Under the same project, the Committee will
organize youth seminars in Niš and Novi Sad.
|
|
