Social aspects of ethnic conflicts in Temerin

Abstract

Ethnic tensions and conflicts in Temerin, a town located close to the capital of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, have attracted the attention of both the Serbian public and the public of Hungarian national minority in Vojvodina. The paper relates ethnic conflicts in Temerin with non-ethnic social dimensions. Generally, the author tests modernisation theory, as an example of developmentalist theory, as well as interactionist and instrumentalist theories of ethnicity. Particularly, the paper provides corroboration test of the ethnic competition hypothesis, posed by Sarah Belanger and Maurice Pinard, which specifies conditions that transform ethnic competition into ethnic conflict. Finally, the study has revealed that material status has no influence on national intolerance. However, at the level of ethnic groups, the issues of public usage of language and positioning in the labour market are related to the ethnic conflicts in Temerin.

Keywords

• Temerin
• Serbs and Hungarians
• ethnic competition
• ethnic conflicts
• nationalism