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Where is Serbia? Traditions of Spatial Identity and State Positioning in Serbian Geopolitical Culture

Savic, Bojan (2014) Where is Serbia? Traditions of Spatial Identity and State Positioning in Serbian Geopolitical Culture. Geopolitics, 19 (3). pp. 684-718. ISSN 1465-0045. E-ISSN 1557-3028. (doi:10.1080/14650045.2014.915808) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:50216)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2014.915808

Abstract

This article studies the geopolitical traditions of spatial imagining of Serbia amongst the country’s political elites since the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. It examines some of the socially dominant discourses of spatial positioning of Serbia as a historical-political narrative. The study argues that one can identify five distinct geopolitical traditions that, in variably overlapping or mutually contradicting ways, address two questions: ‘Where is Serbia’ and ‘How is its perceived smallness felt and described’? A first tradition is that which attributes sacred, divine and martyr-like features to the country, its small earthly “Serbian lands” and people. A second tradition conveys spatially maximised and biopolitical visions of “Serbdom”, amounting to variable designs of a “Greater Serbia” anxious about its felt frontiers and smallness. The final three traditions are the mutually exclusive positioning of Serbia around an East-West axis as either Eastern or Western, or a geographically unique and exceptional bridge between the two, whereby each positioning recasts smallness as a crucial feature of geopolitical exceptionality. The article concludes with some general observations on the challenges of studying geopolitical cultures.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/14650045.2014.915808
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation
H Social Sciences
J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
J Political Science > JZ International relations
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Bojan Savic
Date Deposited: 19 Aug 2015 12:04 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 10:59 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/50216 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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