Although Kosovo is its locus,
this book observes the developments of several ethno-religious groups in the
region on a wider scale, with focus on different aspects of identity. Duijzings
brushes off the carte blanche descriptions and nationalist narratives of the
two dominant ethnic groups/nationalities, the Serbs and Albanians, to
demonstrate a deeper and wider plethora of people's with a distinct yet shared
history and territory in the late 1990’s. How identities play out, are flexible
(then rigid), and the complexities of these on social/political and economic
relations are what is threaded throughout his work. One example is Letnica and
its Catholic minority, about how they lived there, looking at the overarching
battles that narrowed to two national narratives that they could not identify
with, and their moving to Croatia proper. The next is the example of the
diffuse Muslim identity, initially viewed as a unified whole across Yugoslavia,
with its splits between official and Sunni, beside unorthodox dervish practices
and Shi'a tendencies. Whilst he delivers ethnographic accounts, he also
provides historical overviews of how these identities, national and religious,
formed; and explains how objective and subjective relations meant that some
peoples were included and excluded in these group/social events and practices.
Fundamentally he portrays an image of religions that co-existed, tolerated each
other, and shared each other’s holy sites; yet witnessing a descent into
isolation and confrontation. The concept of syncretism is applied to highlight
how religious practices on the ground weren’t those imposed via orthodoxy nor
a pure form dictated from above, especially when new religions came to the fore
and needed accommodating. This mirror’s Tone Bringa’s work in ‘Being Muslim the
Bosnian Way’, which looked at village life in a Croat/Muslim mixed village on
the eve of the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia.
One specific and novel group he
(re)’discovered’ were the 'Egyptians', who were presumed to be a new
phenomenon, although lots of ethnographic and linguistic work has been written
on this group. Debates around their 'origin' play to perennial views on nations
and national identity, but Duijzings critiques these and suggests that, even if
one took the term Gypsy as the core of their identity, the current identity was
pulled together from diverse historical fragments and forged into a generic
'outsider' label. But this also aligns with the 'nestling orientalism' thesis,
whereby this group wants to disassociate themselves with those identities that
others seek to place them with. So the Egyptians use classifications to say why
they are not like Gypsies,
socio-economically or culturally. And so this argument builds by looking at the
process of Albanianisation of Muslim Gypsies, to show how one group of people
(Serb and Macedonian authorities) claim they wished to assimilate and wanted no
conflict, and those groups themselves who had no vehicle for official
recognition up to the 1990s. In detailing this recognition vis-a-vis the
census, he describes the group’s mimicry which led to them being unaccounted
for. This ties in with themes in my previous book review, that of Christian
Promitzer et al, of groups hiding or being hidden.
In tandem with this he looks at the timing 'of emergence', or
more precisely, who were the political rulers at any particular time. He errs
close to portraying a clientistic relationship, where state jobs are sought and
thus identity alters or (re) appears to curry favour. But he fundamentally
dilutes the 'invention of Egyptians' argument because identity traits must have
resided locally anyway. It was timing and changes to the political discourse
that allowed a space for these to come together on a wider, national space.
Yet by 1990, ethnic unmixing had already reached its goal, with
communities having as little contact between them as possible. All have
suffered, not just one side or another. It wasn’t ‘ethnic problems’ as such,
but problems ethnicized by politicians and populations at ease to point the
finger, and so one needs to see the problems from a politico-socio-economic
perspective not an ethnic-national one. To resolve this, he declared that
democracy and an opposition were needed in Serbia.
Although this prescription was a viable one when the book was
being written, in the immediate years after publication the world witnessed the
fall of Milosevic, and Kosovo was already being run as a UN protectorate. So
events altered to hamper this path to de-escalation of the ethnic unmixing.
Instead, secession and ultimately independence, seen as the answer, created new
problems. As is the nature of nationalism, when a political boundary is newly
defined, nations not happy with the delineation argue for a revision or for secession
themselves. Hence the Serbs of the northern enclave of Mitrovica demanded their
‘right’ to leave Kosovo. And so the spiral continues. Thus the artificial
maintenance of groups seen as ‘units’ continues, whether that’s on the ground
as tangible relations (or lack thereof) between people, or merely from a
theoretical point of view. And the myths used as a tool for unmixing leading to
the solidification of these groups as units, seen by Duijzings as having a
lifespan, continue to have a powerful negative impact, despite democratization
in Serbia and independence of Kosovo.
So the return to a Venn diagram of ‘groupness’, as
ethnographically accounted for by the author, is still a far way off. Yet, this
does not underline and prove the nationalist argument that violence is the
result of these differences in cultural traits. It is the conclusion reached
from that very Western, enlighlightened, and rational notion of the
nation-state.
What Duijzing’s provides us with is a deconstruction of the
usual debate around identity in Kosovo. By ethnographically portraying the
people within the area, he knocks down the binary of two, fixed identities of
Serbs and Kosovans, as so typically seen by people in the West, and develops an
overview of a diverse people whose path to unmixing stemmed from political and
socio-economic factors ethnicised by political leaders. One could claim,
however, that by unveiling ‘new’ identities in the region he is simply
following the nationalist argument and identifying these groups as units. But I
would agree with his assertion that there aren’t groups, but groupness. And
what he portrays is a centre/periphery description of how one subjectively
accounts for one’s own identity, and that the concentric circles of identity
classifications that flow from the centre multifariously link up with
identities’ of the ‘other’. So although the centres may not match, the lesser
priority identity classifications may do so and create that common bond. The
sharing of religious sites is a prime example of how this was done in Kosovo.
