The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives (review)

The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives. By Eric D. Gordy. Pennsylvania State University Press 1999. 230 pp. Cloth, $58.50; paper, $17.95.

On June 28, 2001, Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Yugoslavia, was transported to the the Hague for eventual prosecution by the international war crimes tribunal. This dramatic turn in Milosevic's fortunes was preceded by more than a decade in which he presided over four wars, hundreds of thousands of dead and displaced, increasing international isolation and subsequent Nato bombing of his country. Eric Gordy's book, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives, examines the means by which Slobodan Milosevic and his regime exercised power throughout those years. Gordy argues that the regime engaged not only in wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina (and later, Kosovo), but also in a "silent war" in Serbia itself, a war of the "state against society." (Gordy thus implicitly distinguishes what happened in Serbia from the Central European civil society movements — against the state — of the 1980s). The regime's "legitimacy" was not predicated on widespread consent nor was its longevity due primarily to on-going nationalist mobilization. Instead, Gordy contends, the regime systematically destroyed alternatives to its rule.

The book thus focuses on the regime's permeation of everyday life, especially in Belgrade, through its control of the public sphere, notably "information, expression, sociability and popular culture." First, Gordy briefly reviews the general political context of Serbian "nationalist authoritarianism" and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. He notes continuities and discontinuities between Milosevic's regime and the previous Communist regime, differences between Serbs living in urban and rural areas, and the role of nationalist discourse in regime support.

Having set out the parameters of his study, Gordy then dissects the process by which the regime maintained itself through the destruction of alternative perspectives and practices, all the while proclaiming its own democratic rule. To this end, the regime resorted to familiar tactics. To mobilize sentiment, it engaged in conspiratorial accusations against diverse enemies (e.g. intellectuals, foreigners). To justify repression, it harnessed and perverted electoral and legal authority for its own interests. To control the dissemination of information, it harassed Belgrade's independent media; to contain cultural expression, it attacked youth culture and its rock 'n roll music, instead promoting Serbian "neofolk." To limit social critique, the regime used economic chaos (e.g., hyperinflation of the early 1990s; later, international economic sanctions) to its advantage. Extreme shortage economies constrain sociability and do not customarily foment radical resistance.

As a now historical case study, Gordy's book provides much useful information. Gordy devotes substantive chapters to the destruction of political, information, and musical alternatives, as well as to sociability. In each, he discusses geographically (urban-rural) and generationally differentiated responses to the regime. The Culture of Power in Serbia is more descriptively rich than analytically compelling. Generally, it is an uneven work that would have benefited from closer editorial guidance. For example, the chapter on music cultures is considerably more developed and novel than the others and brings a welcome dimension to the study of authoritarian (nationalist) regimes. Yet it is unclear why there is no discussion of other expressive cultural forms such as theater, art, or literature. Stylistically, there are striking redundancies, arbitrary usage of Serbian words, and so on. More unsatisfying, Gordy does not situate his theoretical argument in the broader context of the region's processes of regime transformation, whether "velvet" or violent. As such, Gordy's case study may seem too specialized for many readers.

Nonetheless, The Culture of Power in Serbia itself presents an alternative political sociological/cultural reading of the Milosevic regime's tenacity that contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on the the role of the "state against society," and of civil society against the state. In the end, after thirteen long years, the power of...