Религија, медији и култура мира
Religion, the Media and the Culture of Peace

Summary/Abstract: The paper problematizes importance of religion in the countries in transition for the development of the culture of peace and the globalization of understanding and solidarity, ie. for realization of socio- cultural integrative role that religion plays in contemporary world. The paper especially focuses on the relation among three factors: religion, the media and the culture of peace.The paper’s starting point is the following (hypo)thesis: the implosion of socialism in most postsocialist societies has brought about a cultural shock, causing those societies to find themselves in a state of anomia and trauma, and in an unprecedented gap between the past and the future. It is in such a situation, when the old system of hegemony has disintegrated and the values and mechanisms of the new one have not yet been established, that religion and the media can represent a factor of both integration and disintegration, of both stabilization and destabilization. This particular relation is explored using the example of the Balkans in the periods between 1990 and 2000, and between 2000 and 2010. In the former period, religion and the media in this geospace, and especially in former Yugoslavia, being instrumentalized by the political factor, played a negative role, encouraging ethnopolitical conflicts and the senseless game of ‘’murderous identities’’, of national particularities gone wild, which brought about not only the disintegration of the Yugoslav political community, but also the destabilization of various nations through their reethnization and rebalkanization.Yet another focus of the paper is the research of the positive integrative function of religion and the media, when they, in a postconflict situation, have the potential to open the roads of globalization of under- standing and co-operation among various nations and cultures.

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