PREOBRAŽAJI ETNIČKOG I NACIONALNOG SOPSTVA
TRANSFORMATIONS OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL SELVES

Summary/Abstract: Anthony D. Smith’s theory of ethnicity and nationalism serves as a background for an introduction to the study of modern transformations of ethnic selves in national selves in Eastern Europe. His ethno-symbolism is considered to provide a powerful tool in examining in depth transformations national selves, particularly those in the ex-Yugoslavia, have undergone in recent times. A guiding thread in this context is Smith’s thesis about the renewal of ethnic self in the modern times. However, a closer examination of the third way of demotic nationalism since the late 1950s indicates that ethno-nationalism cannot be any more confined to its classical, second and derived model of national identity-building. If the constant national self-renewal, in which a reconstruction of ethnic self is always implied, has become an imperative of the new age, to which most eloquently testifies the recent Western neo-nationalism, then it does not suffice any more to simply oppose civic nationalism to ethnic one. It is the very principle of modern political legitimacy that is nowadays under the threat of being ethnicized.

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