Ivana Spasic
Biographic Data
| ID | 1304740 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ivana Spasic |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ivana |
| FAMILY NAME | Spasic |
| SIGNATURE | SPASIC I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Filozofski fakultet, Beograd |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4645-1160 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sociology and Literature
The paper begins with Wolf Lepenies’ idea of sociology as a “third culture“, positioned between science and the humanities. Lepenies argues that sociology arose in the 19th century in the context of a bitter rivalry with literature, as both contestants sought to become the principal guide in helping humanity find its way in the new, modern society ushered in by political and industrial revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This c…
Urban identity of Belgrade
Using a typology of urban symbolism, the identity of Belgrade is reconstructed on the basis of accounts by a sample of city residents, foreigners and locals, who work in international companies and organizations. The component of behavioral symbolism is found to prevail, referring to the place?s atmosphere, mood, spirit, or energy. Next comes material symbolism, particularly in relation to Belgrade?s location at the confluence of two rivers, and …
The informative and the performative in semi-structured interviews
The paper reexamines the semi-structured interview method on the basis of data collected in a study of medium-sized Serbian towns. The analysis of transcripts shows that the analytic quality of data varied depending on the interviewee?s position in the local institutional structure, so that in interviews with representatives of political and social institutions role playing (the performative) prevailed over providing information on social reality…
Social construction of reality and constructionism
The paper discusses interpretive contention around the legacy of the Social Construction of Reality. On one hand, the book is regularly considered a founding work in the history of constructionism. On the other, Berger and Luckmann themselves vigorously opposed this view, claiming that constructionism had different theoretical origins and intentions, and was ideologically biased. The paper's conclusion is that their argument is only partially cor…
The Universality of Banal Nationalism, Or Can the Flag Hang Unobtrusively Outside a Serbian Post Office?
Ivana Spasić in her chapter examines the concept of banal nationalism from a perspective embedded in the contemporary Serbian society as an instance of global semi-periphery. Such a vantage point helps detect three different, and sometimes divergent, meanings of the “banality” of banal nationalism: the geographical, the substantive, and the cognitive. It is argued that Billig’s failure to deal in a more systematic manner with this ambiguity, as w…
Beyond East and West
In this piece, we develop a more complex picture of the East-West divisions that have characterized much analysis of the region since the crisis began. By examining how differently positioned actors have responded, the migration flows become a heuristic for other important but less visible processes in post-socialist state formation and Euro-integration. We use the complexity of Serbia's reception as an empirical ground to create a new analytic f…
Image of the city between consensus and tension
Starting from the concept of urban identity, defined as a set of unique features characterizing a city/town that set it apart from others and ensure its continuous recognizability, the paper takes the example of six urban centers in Serbia (Kragujevac, Sabac, Uzice, Novi Pazar, Sombor and Zrenjanin) to examine the degree of consensus or divergence concerning these identities. Three dimensions i.e three kinds of tension that can arise within, or i…
Identity of the city
The paper analyzes the identities of four cities/towns in Serbia: Kragujevac, Novi Pazar, Sabac and Uzice, as seen by their inhabitants and other local actors. The identity of a city is defined as a set of unique features ensuring its continuous recognizability and distinguishing it from any other city. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2013 within the project ?Characteristics of Territorial Capital in Serbia…
Patriotism and cosmopolitanism in intellectual discourse
Rather than being just abstract notions scholars write about, patriotism and cosmopolitanism are used by social actors in ongoing social life. Whether employed to name ?us? and exalt the values of one?s own group, or to name ?them? and stigmatize what the opponents stand for, the two terms have long served as potent discursive weapons in the struggle for various kinds of power in Serbia. While they retain some significance to this day, the peak o…
Strategies and tactics in social space
The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today's Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from…
Yugoslavia as a place for living a normal life
The text reconstructs the representation of life in socialist Yugoslavia, as depicted by ordinary people in Serbia today, on the basis of empirical data collected through focus group interviews. It is shown that this representation is consistent with findings of several studies of Yugonostalgia. What is lamented is material prosperity, social security, chances for employment, free health care and education, but also, as singled out in the analysi…
Fieldwork in philosophy“
Unlike the standard view that Clifford Geertz and Pierre Bourdieu embody contrary social scientific paradigms, it is argued that they share a whole set of similarities in terms of theory, research practice, and scholarly ethics. After briefly presenting the details of their encounter in the early 1970s, the authors identify the following points of their implicit and unintended convergence: 1) blurring of interdisciplinary boundaries, 2) work in N…
Variants of „Third Serbia“
This paper examines different forms in which ?Third Serbia? is being discursively constructed. This concept has recently been offered within the public arena as the alternative to the former division into ?First? and ?Second? Serbia. Although the name is the same, ?Third Serbia? is not one but many. They all share an explicit call for overcoming cleavages and extremes, which are perceived as overdrawn, artificial, and/or removed from genuine conc…
Cosmopolitanism as Discourse and Performance
The paper offers a critical reading of recent literature on cosmopolitanism, from a perspective theoretically informed by Bourdieu and shaped by the experiential and intellectual context of southeast Europe as the semiperiphery. Several blind spots are identified, the most important one being insufficient self-reflection on the part of major contributors, resulting in unintended celebration of what is routinely available to only some parts of the…
Political change in Serbia in the perspective of social learning
The paper contains a retrospective of the thesis that 'social learning' may be deployed as analytical framework to understand political change in Serbia, first proposed in 2001. The thesis contends that the events immediately before and after the toppling of Milosevic's regime in 2000 may be interpreted as outcomes of a process of collective learning by Serbian citizens. On the basis of the findings of three-wave qualitative study 'Politics and E…
Bruno Latour, actor-networks, and the critique of critical sociology
The paper analyzes the theoretical opus of Bruno Latour and his treatment of the concept of critique. In the first section "actor-network theory" is presented through its key notions (actant, network, translation, associations) together with Latour?s theory of modernity. In the second section various aspects of the relation between Latour and critique are discussed - first his own criticism of others (standard sociology and especially "critical",…
Politics and everyday life in Serbia in 2005
The paper offers an analysis of the interview data collected in the project "Politics and everyday life: Three years later" in terms of three main topics: attitudes to the political sphere, change of social system, and the democratic public sphere. The analysis focuses on ambivalences expressed in the responses which, under the surface of overall disappointment and discontent, may contain preserved results of the previously achieved "social learn…
Citoyens contre politiques
La signification des événements du 5 octobre 2000 en Serbie est examinée ici avec un recul de trois ans. Ce jour-là, des manifestations massives firent chuter le régime de S. Milosevic et la question fondamentale est de savoir si cette date peut être considérée comme historique dans le sens où elle fut à la fois l'expression et un facteur du changement de la culture politique en Serbie vers plus de démocratie et de tolérance. Pour tenter d'y répo…
Feminism and the sociology of everyday life
This paper examines the influences of feminist thought on sociological theory and research, refracted through the conceptualization of the sphere of everyday life. It is argued that there are important theoretical affinities between feminism and the sociology of everyday life, as it has developed since mid-20th century. Main feminist contributions to sociological study of everyday life are identified at two levels: substantive (the study of forme…
Citizens in the maelstrom of change
In analyzing any society, particularly those which, like Serbia, have undergone deep ruptures and turmoil in a short period of time, the perspective of everyday life and ordinary people's experiences is indispensable. In addition, the application of current sociological and anthropological theories of everyday life on today's Serbia, seeking to capture personalized interpretations whereby ordinary citizens make sense of all that has happened to t…
Beyond East and West
In this piece, we develop a more complex picture of the East-West divisions that have characterized much analysis of the region since the crisis began. By examining how differently positioned actors have responded, the migration flows become a heuristic for other important but less visible processes in post-socialist state formation and Euro-integration. We use the complexity of Serbia's reception as an empirical ground to create a new analytic f…
Strategies and tactics in social space
The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today's Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from…
Variants of „Third Serbia“
This paper examines different forms in which ?Third Serbia? is being discursively constructed. This concept has recently been offered within the public arena as the alternative to the former division into ?First? and ?Second? Serbia. Although the name is the same, ?Third Serbia? is not one but many. They all share an explicit call for overcoming cleavages and extremes, which are perceived as overdrawn, artificial, and/or removed from genuine conc…
Patriotism and cosmopolitanism in intellectual discourse
Rather than being just abstract notions scholars write about, patriotism and cosmopolitanism are used by social actors in ongoing social life. Whether employed to name ?us? and exalt the values of one?s own group, or to name ?them? and stigmatize what the opponents stand for, the two terms have long served as potent discursive weapons in the struggle for various kinds of power in Serbia. While they retain some significance to this day, the peak o…
Citizens in the maelstrom of change
In analyzing any society, particularly those which, like Serbia, have undergone deep ruptures and turmoil in a short period of time, the perspective of everyday life and ordinary people's experiences is indispensable. In addition, the application of current sociological and anthropological theories of everyday life on today's Serbia, seeking to capture personalized interpretations whereby ordinary citizens make sense of all that has happened to t…
Feminism and the sociology of everyday life
This paper examines the influences of feminist thought on sociological theory and research, refracted through the conceptualization of the sphere of everyday life. It is argued that there are important theoretical affinities between feminism and the sociology of everyday life, as it has developed since mid-20th century. Main feminist contributions to sociological study of everyday life are identified at two levels: substantive (the study of forme…
Citoyens contre politiques
La signification des événements du 5 octobre 2000 en Serbie est examinée ici avec un recul de trois ans. Ce jour-là, des manifestations massives firent chuter le régime de S. Milosevic et la question fondamentale est de savoir si cette date peut être considérée comme historique dans le sens où elle fut à la fois l'expression et un facteur du changement de la culture politique en Serbie vers plus de démocratie et de tolérance. Pour tenter d'y répo…
Politics and everyday life in Serbia in 2005
The paper offers an analysis of the interview data collected in the project "Politics and everyday life: Three years later" in terms of three main topics: attitudes to the political sphere, change of social system, and the democratic public sphere. The analysis focuses on ambivalences expressed in the responses which, under the surface of overall disappointment and discontent, may contain preserved results of the previously achieved "social learn…
Bruno Latour, actor-networks, and the critique of critical sociology
The paper analyzes the theoretical opus of Bruno Latour and his treatment of the concept of critique. In the first section "actor-network theory" is presented through its key notions (actant, network, translation, associations) together with Latour?s theory of modernity. In the second section various aspects of the relation between Latour and critique are discussed - first his own criticism of others (standard sociology and especially "critical",…
Political change in Serbia in the perspective of social learning
The paper contains a retrospective of the thesis that 'social learning' may be deployed as analytical framework to understand political change in Serbia, first proposed in 2001. The thesis contends that the events immediately before and after the toppling of Milosevic's regime in 2000 may be interpreted as outcomes of a process of collective learning by Serbian citizens. On the basis of the findings of three-wave qualitative study 'Politics and E…
Cosmopolitanism as Discourse and Performance
The paper offers a critical reading of recent literature on cosmopolitanism, from a perspective theoretically informed by Bourdieu and shaped by the experiential and intellectual context of southeast Europe as the semiperiphery. Several blind spots are identified, the most important one being insufficient self-reflection on the part of major contributors, resulting in unintended celebration of what is routinely available to only some parts of the…
Yugoslavia as a place for living a normal life
The text reconstructs the representation of life in socialist Yugoslavia, as depicted by ordinary people in Serbia today, on the basis of empirical data collected through focus group interviews. It is shown that this representation is consistent with findings of several studies of Yugonostalgia. What is lamented is material prosperity, social security, chances for employment, free health care and education, but also, as singled out in the analysi…
Fieldwork in philosophy“
Unlike the standard view that Clifford Geertz and Pierre Bourdieu embody contrary social scientific paradigms, it is argued that they share a whole set of similarities in terms of theory, research practice, and scholarly ethics. After briefly presenting the details of their encounter in the early 1970s, the authors identify the following points of their implicit and unintended convergence: 1) blurring of interdisciplinary boundaries, 2) work in N…
Variants of „Third Serbia“
This paper examines different forms in which ?Third Serbia? is being discursively constructed. This concept has recently been offered within the public arena as the alternative to the former division into ?First? and ?Second? Serbia. Although the name is the same, ?Third Serbia? is not one but many. They all share an explicit call for overcoming cleavages and extremes, which are perceived as overdrawn, artificial, and/or removed from genuine conc…
Identity of the city
The paper analyzes the identities of four cities/towns in Serbia: Kragujevac, Novi Pazar, Sabac and Uzice, as seen by their inhabitants and other local actors. The identity of a city is defined as a set of unique features ensuring its continuous recognizability and distinguishing it from any other city. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2013 within the project ?Characteristics of Territorial Capital in Serbia…
Patriotism and cosmopolitanism in intellectual discourse
Rather than being just abstract notions scholars write about, patriotism and cosmopolitanism are used by social actors in ongoing social life. Whether employed to name ?us? and exalt the values of one?s own group, or to name ?them? and stigmatize what the opponents stand for, the two terms have long served as potent discursive weapons in the struggle for various kinds of power in Serbia. While they retain some significance to this day, the peak o…
Strategies and tactics in social space
The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today's Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from…
Image of the city between consensus and tension
Starting from the concept of urban identity, defined as a set of unique features characterizing a city/town that set it apart from others and ensure its continuous recognizability, the paper takes the example of six urban centers in Serbia (Kragujevac, Sabac, Uzice, Novi Pazar, Sombor and Zrenjanin) to examine the degree of consensus or divergence concerning these identities. Three dimensions i.e three kinds of tension that can arise within, or i…
The Universality of Banal Nationalism, Or Can the Flag Hang Unobtrusively Outside a Serbian Post Office?
Ivana Spasić in her chapter examines the concept of banal nationalism from a perspective embedded in the contemporary Serbian society as an instance of global semi-periphery. Such a vantage point helps detect three different, and sometimes divergent, meanings of the “banality” of banal nationalism: the geographical, the substantive, and the cognitive. It is argued that Billig’s failure to deal in a more systematic manner with this ambiguity, as w…
Beyond East and West
In this piece, we develop a more complex picture of the East-West divisions that have characterized much analysis of the region since the crisis began. By examining how differently positioned actors have responded, the migration flows become a heuristic for other important but less visible processes in post-socialist state formation and Euro-integration. We use the complexity of Serbia's reception as an empirical ground to create a new analytic f…
Social construction of reality and constructionism
The paper discusses interpretive contention around the legacy of the Social Construction of Reality. On one hand, the book is regularly considered a founding work in the history of constructionism. On the other, Berger and Luckmann themselves vigorously opposed this view, claiming that constructionism had different theoretical origins and intentions, and was ideologically biased. The paper's conclusion is that their argument is only partially cor…
Urban identity of Belgrade
Using a typology of urban symbolism, the identity of Belgrade is reconstructed on the basis of accounts by a sample of city residents, foreigners and locals, who work in international companies and organizations. The component of behavioral symbolism is found to prevail, referring to the place?s atmosphere, mood, spirit, or energy. Next comes material symbolism, particularly in relation to Belgrade?s location at the confluence of two rivers, and …
The informative and the performative in semi-structured interviews
The paper reexamines the semi-structured interview method on the basis of data collected in a study of medium-sized Serbian towns. The analysis of transcripts shows that the analytic quality of data varied depending on the interviewee?s position in the local institutional structure, so that in interviews with representatives of political and social institutions role playing (the performative) prevailed over providing information on social reality…
Sociology and Literature
The paper begins with Wolf Lepenies’ idea of sociology as a “third culture“, positioned between science and the humanities. Lepenies argues that sociology arose in the 19th century in the context of a bitter rivalry with literature, as both contestants sought to become the principal guide in helping humanity find its way in the new, modern society ushered in by political and industrial revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This c…
Sociology (19 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Balkans: History, Politics, Society (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Serbian (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)