“Nobody’s Stronger than the State”
“Nobody’s Stronger than the State”

Crisis and Hope among Serbian NGO Workers and War Veterans

Summary/Abstract: This paper compares the ways in which Serbian NGO workers and members of the associations of veterans of the post-Yugoslav wars conceived and responded to the recent economic crisis. The authors highlight the importance of discourse and experience in how people construct and deal with crisis. The ways in which the NGO workers and veterans engage with the crisis reflect their divergent experiences of recent Serbian history, hopes rooted in different pasts, and ideological frameworks through which they interpret these experiences and hopes. However, both groups assign a central and paradoxical role to the state: while the actual state is seen as failing and thus generating crisis, the ideal state is expected to resolve it. In their practical responses to the crisis, both the NGO workers and the veterans continued to rely on the state. This has made possible the continued reproduction of the cultural hegemony of the state.

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