As “music of commitment,” in the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s rock music in Yugoslavia had an important purpose of providing a popular-cultural outlet for the unique forms of socio-cultural critique that engaged with the realities and problems of Yugoslav society. The three “music movements” that embodied the new rock'n'roll spirit – New Wave, New Primitives, and New Partisans – used rock music to critique the country's “new socialist culture,” with the purpose of helping to eliminate the disconnect between the ideal and the reality of socialist Yugoslavia. This paper examines the New Partisans as the most radical expression of music of commitment through the works of its most important rock bands: Bijelo dugme, Plavi orkestar, and Merlin. The paper's argument is that the New Partisans’ socio-cultural engagement, animated by advocacy of Yugoslavism, was a counter-logic to the nationalist dissolution of a distinctly Yugoslav fabric of a socialist community in crisis. Thus, the movement's revolutionary “spirit of reconstruction” permeating its “poetics of the patriotic” was a mechanism of socio-cultural resistance to political, cultural and moral-ethical de-Yugoslavization of Yugoslav society. Its ultimate objective was to make the case that the only way into the future – if there was to be any – rested on strategic reanimation of the Partisan revolutionary past as the only viable socio-cultural foundation of the Yugoslav socialist community.

This paper examines the controversial music genre rabiz in relation to political and socioeconomic developments in post-Soviet Armenia. Rabiz, an urban folk-pop genre characterized by melismatic singing and “oriental” embellishments, is a ubiquitous soundtrack to everyday life in the country, with lyrics commonly covering romance, male friendship, and family ties. Ethnographic observations suggest that its popularity draws on the affective appeal with which it captures common hardships and aspirations of post-socialist transition. In spite of this, rabiz is almost universally denounced by nationalist intellectuals and liberal citizens for foreign influences, sentimentality, consumerism, and conservatism. While for the cultured classes, the rejection of rabiz as “un-Armenian” is often an integral part of the construction of a virtuous self, the alternative conceptions of performers and fans reveal the polysemy of Armenianness as a moral category.

The article analyzes the material or objectified reproduction of the Basque demos since democracy was established in Spain in 1980. Spain holds within its territory diverse regions and political communities and the Basque case is a highly illustrative example of how the development of regional state institutions is fundamental for the reproduction of distinct democratic demoi not merely in their political but also socio-economic dimension. This paper argues that, in our current European context, political distinctions cannot become effectively objectified and instituted power structures without state institutions being able to uphold a differentiated system of stratification.

Gypsies are one of the most famous though least known national minorities, representatives of which can be found in many countries. Several works have been written about them but no analysis has yet been made of the interrelationship between Gypsies and the nationalities among whom they live. An analysis of this kind is timely in that it would give governments a means with which to alleviate ethnic tensions by amending their present faulty nationality minority policies.

The author of this article has recently made a detailed sociological study by means of a lengthy questionnaire of the attitudes of various nationality groups towards each other in Ukraine. Included in it are questions either directly or indirectly relating to the Gypsies. This ethnic group, despite its relatively small size, is well known throughout Ukraine. Gypsies stand out from the rest of the population by their way of life and by their appearance; as a rule, they speak their own language, even though they know the languages of other nationalities. Most of the population of Ukraine comes in contact with Gypsies, though most often with their worst representatives (swindlers, extortionists, etc.). They meet these Gypsies in the most populous places—at railroad stations, outside large stores, and in marketplaces.

This article explores the emerging national narratives about Muslim national identity in the period of the 1960s and 1970s. After the national recognition of a Bosnian Muslim nation, which was proposed by the members of the Central Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the intellectuals’ task to endow the national category with cultural repertoire. Hereby affirmative as well as negating discursive practices on the national status of Muslims entered the debates, which geographically expanded the republican scope of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author examines internal discussions of the LCY on that issue as well as the intellectuals’ engagement in the public spheres in Socialist Yugoslavia. By integrating the nation-building activities of intellectuals outside Yugoslavia, the author postulates for a trans-national dimension of nation-building processes.

This article analyzes memory politics during the first 20 years (1991-2011) of the newly independent Estonia. Memory politics is understood as a politics endeavoring to shape the society's collective memory and establish notions of what is and is not to be remembered of the past, employing to this end both legislative means and practical measures. The paper presents one possible scheme for analyzing Estonian memory politics and limits its treatment in two important ways. Firstly, the focus is on national memory politics, that is the decisions of the parliament, government, and president oriented toward shaping collective memory. And second, only internal memory politics is discussed; that is, bi- or multilateral memory-political relations with other states or political unions are not examined separately. The analysis is built on four interrelated dimensions of memory politics, which have played the most important roles in Estonia: the legal, institutional, commemorative, and monumental dimensions. Also, a general characterization and temporal articulation of memory politics in newly independent Estonia is proposed.