Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU (Jan 2013)
Serb community in Gnjilane: Nostalgia discourse of the urban enclave
Abstract
The paper is based on field research carried out among members of the Serb community in the town of Gnjilane in 2006. I first discuss the multi-sited fieldwork, whose goal was to study the relation between ethnicity and other forms of collective identification in the Serb community in southeast Kosovo, in the profoundly changed situation that has existed since 1999. The key concept of this paper - nostalgia - is then established. I go on to discuss the population of Gnjilane as reflected in the census, and the possibility of a census that would reflect the complex social and ethnic situation in Kosovo. I also describe the small urban Serb enclave in Gnjilane in the post-war period. In the radically changed ethnic and social landscape that followed the war, the discourse of members of the small urban enclave about themselves and the other is a kaleidoscope of reflective nostalgia. Looked at “from above”, the perspective of ordinary people, the past takes on a wider spectrum of colours and emotions than the official black and white images - both Serbian and Kosovan - of victims, aggressors and never-ending hatred. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177027: Multietnicitet, multikulturalnost, migracije - savremeni procesi]
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