Siniša Malešević
Biographic Data
| ID | 93505 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Siniša Malešević |
| GIVEN NAMES | Siniša |
| FAMILY NAME | Malešević |
| SIGNATURE | MALEŠEVIĆ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College Dublin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1864-6382 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 111 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 364 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 107 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
War and peace in the early 21st century: An introduction
This introductory article critiques dominant, teleological social science narratives that position organised violence as a declining historical phenomenon. Instead, it asserts the structural centrality of warfare as a primary catalyst for institutional, political and societal transformation across human history. The author examines the dynamic relationship between organised violence and systemic social change, demonstrating how large-scale confli…
Beyond the technology of power: Foucault and nationalism today
Foucault's intellectual legacy is vast, spanning a wide range of fields and analytical concerns. However, he has very little to say about one of the most important phenomena that has shaped modern world – nationalism. This article argues that the social dynamics of modernity and the transformation of collective subjectivities cannot be adequately understood without addressing processes of nation-formation. Since nationalism operates as the domina…
War and social order in the contemporary world
This foreword to the Sociological Review Monograph on War Frames: Insights from Eastern Europe and East Asia highlights the key contributions made by this collective volume in advancing our knowledge about the relationship between warfare and social change
Do civil wars make or break states? Towards a historical sociology of intra-state conflicts
Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise and Transformation of Modern Subjectivities
While nationalism is a term that is often associated with instability, violence, extremism, terrorism, wars and even genocide, in fact most forms of nationalism are nonviolent. Beyond politics, it is a set of discourses and practices that shape economic, social, legal, and cultural life all over the globe. This book explores the global rise and transformation of nationalism and analyses the organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional mec…
Warrior ethos and the spirit of nationalism
Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics by Lynn Tesser
The Return of War in Europe: Contemporary Sociology and Organised Violence
Few social scientists expected another major inter-state war in Europe. The dominant positions either confine warfare to the dustbin of European history or downplay its significance in late modernity. Sociologists of war have been less surprised by recent developments, however. In a wider socio-historical context warfare remains a crucial catalyst of social change. No other social phenomenon has continuously influenced the social world to such an…
Nationalism and War in the 21st‐Century Europe
Since the end of WWII, many analysts were adamant that Europe is a continent of peace and geopolitical stability. The influential authors were arguing that warfare is experiencing a historical decline and that many forms of organised violence belong to the dustbin of European history. The leading scholars of organised violence tended to focus on civil wars, revolutions and insurgencies on other continents. The dominant view was that Europe is unl…
Nationalism and Magic
The scholars of nationalism have recognised that nationalist discourses often invoke magical events and frame national past in supernatural terms. This article explores the relationship between magic and nationalism in the contemporary world. The focus is on the inherent tensions between the ever‐ increasing rationalisation that shapes everyday life in modernity and the continuous popular quest for the magical enchantment. The paper aims to show …
Between deep comradeship and nationalism: The social dynamics of solidarity on the battlefield
This article explores the social mechanisms that facilitate the transformation of micro‐level bonds into coherent nationalist narratives of solidarity. The aim is to explain the paradox: while the armed forces are highly nationalist institutions, most ordinary combatants detest nationalist rhetoric on the battlefield. Drawing on the interviews with the combatants who fought in the 1991–1995 wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina together with…
Organized Callousness: Gaza and the Sociology of War
The ongoing war in Gaza has generated extensive polemic among scholars and the general public.1 Some have described this conflict as a novel form of warfare. The deeply asymmetric character of this
Plotting against our nation: Covid-19, nationalisms, and conspiracy theories in five European countries
This paper analyses the relationships between nationalism and conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the two main issues: 1) the intensity and character of belief in the COVID-19 conspiracy theories across five European societies: Germany, England, Ireland, Serbia, and Sweden; and 2) how is the commitment to specific nationalist ideologies linked with the belief in conspiracy theories. The data indicates that those who desc…
My Country First”: Vaccine Nationalism in England
This article asks what the main factors are that influence the expression of Vaccine Nationalism among the population of England.The analysis is based on data collected in 2021 as part of the project entitled World Problem, National Solutions.A set of logistic regressions test to what extent (1) personal experiences of the pandemic and respondents' vulnerability, (2) perceived threat from other nations, (3) political identities and attachment to …
The Many Faces of Nationalism
This article reviews three recent books on nationalism, each focusing on a different aspect of this multifaceted phenomenon. Mylonas and Radnitz’s volume explores the relationships between nationalism and the politics of treason, Hadžidedic’s book zooms in on the historical interdependence of capitalism and nationalism, while Maxwell’s historical monograph explores nationalist habitus as a form of lived experience. These three insightful contribu…
Grounding civic nationhood: The rise and fall of Yugoslav nationalism, 1918–91
This paper focuses on the development and transformation of Yugoslav nationalism with the spotlight on its two main incarnations – the Yugoslav idea as articulated in the centralized and monarchic state of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918–41) and the development of the Yugoslav project during the state socialist period (1945–91). Using the analytical tools of historical sociology and particularly the grounded nationalism approach, the author aim…
Guerra y Cambio Social
Warfare has shapedmuch of humanhistory and as such has had a profound impact onthe rise and Transformation of social relations.This entry defines warfare and outlines the key instances in the historical relationship between war and society. La guerra ha dado forma a gran parte de la historia humana y, como tal, ha tenido un profundo impacto en el surgimiento y la transformación de las relaciones sociales. En este breve ensayo Malešević define la …
Pro-social attitudes towards ethno-religious out-groups during the Covid-19 pandemic: A survey experiment in five countries
To what extent were individuals willing to help others during the pandemic? This article examines pro-social attitudes among 7000 residents in England, Ireland, Germany, Serbia, and Sweden by showing a fictitious scenario of an older neighbour who needs his groceries to be picked up from a nearby supermarket. The online survey experiment follows a 3 × 2 × 2 factorial design varying the ethno-religious origin of neighbours signalled by the name (A…
Heroes, villains and naked nations: Micro-Solidarity and Grounded Nationalism in Times of Crisis
Figuratively speaking, the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-22) stripped nations naked, exposing the bare structure of how nationalism, as the driving force behind the nation-states, operates on the ground. Based on a survey conducted in April 2021 in five countries (Sweden, Serbia, Germany, Ireland and England), we thematically analyze two open-ended questions on who should be remembered as the heroes and villains of the pandemic, demonstrating that peop…
Grounded Nationalisms in Time and Space: Response to Erin Jenne, Eleanor Knott, and Harris Mylonas
It is a great pleasure to respond to these perceptive, inquisitive, and thought-provoking comments of Jenne, Knott, and Mylonas on my “Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis” (2019). They all bring up many important questions, which would require elaborate explanations that I cannot provide in this short format. Hence, I will try to offer succinct answers to some of the key points they raise. My response is organized around the three grou…
Warfare
Warfare has shaped much of human history and as such has had a profound impact on the rise and transformation of social relations. This entry defines warfare and outlines key milestones in the historical relationship between war and society
The moral fog of war and historical sociology
Hans-Herbert Kögler offers an insightful analysis and a potent moral call to support the defence of Ukraine. This is a sensible moral position that I also share. However, I question Kögler's approach which overemphasises the ethical arguments alone. I argue that wars do not allow for moral absolutism of any kind and that the best one can do in the conditions of warfare is to endorse a version of contextual morality. Furthermore, I make a case for…
Why Humans Fight: The Social Dynamics of Close-Range Violence
Malešević offers a novel sociological answer to the age-old question: 'Why do humans fight?'. Instead of focusing on the motivations of solitary individuals, he emphasises the centrality of the social and historical contexts that make fighting possible. He argues that fighting is not an individual attribute, but a social phenomenon shaped by one's relationships with other people. Drawing on recent scholarship across a variety of academic discipli…
Crime, violence, and coercive power
Social scientists regularly differentiate sharply between crime and political violence. They often argue that unlike the political forms of violence such as wars, terrorism, or revolutions the criminal acts of violence lack clearly defined ideological aims. In this short contribution, I reflect on the special issue articles which all successfully challenge this dichotomy. Furthermore, I expand on these arguments to emphasize the centrality of coe…
Resurrecting National Greatness: The Changing Faces of Golden Age in the Balkans
In this paper, I analyze the changing nationalist narratives of golden age in the Balkans. By zooming in on the case studies of the late nineteenth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century South‐East European societies, I explain how and why the images of the mythical past are articulated differently in the two historical periods. I argue that in the nineteenth century golden age rhetoric was mostly a top‐down phenomenon centered on transforming Balkan pe…
Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis
This book shows, the two forces have developed together through modern history. Malesevic challenges dominant views which see nationalism as a declining social force. He explains why the recent escalations of populist nationalism throughout the world do not represent a social anomaly but are, in fact, a historical norm. By focusing on ever-increasing organisational capacity, greater ideological penetration and networks of micro-solidarity, Malese…
The chimera of national identity
In both popular discourse and many academic works, the existence of national identity is largely taken as given. Although researchers disagree on whether national identities are modern or perennial, and how best to gauge the intensity of identification with a particular nation, there is near unanimity on the view that national identities are real and perceptible entities. In contrast to this view I argue not only that there was no national identi…
The Bosnian Diaspora: Integration in Transnational Communities
The Sociology of New Wars? Assessing the Causes and Objectives of Contemporary Violent Conflicts
The recent accounts of the new war paradigm have been thoroughly scrutinized in a variety of disciplines from security studies and international relations to political economy. The general trend is to focus on the scope, methods, tactics, strategies, forms of war, and/or the level of atrocity. However, there has been little sustained attempt to assess structural causes and the arguments about the changing aims of contemporary warfare. This paper …
Is War Becoming Obsolete? A Sociological Analysis
There is a degree of consensus among scholars that the character of warfare has substantially changed over the past three decades. However, there is no agreement about the direction and causes of this change. Some argue that 'the new wars' have become more brutal, more chaotic and decentralized. These wars are linked to the globalization processes emphasizing that as the unrestrained proliferation of globalized economy intensifies so will these n…
Where does group solidarity come from? Gellner and Ibn Khaldun revisited
Gellner relied extensively on the work of Ibn Khaldun to understand both the dynamics of social order in North Africa and Islam's alleged resistance to secularization. However, what the two scholars also shared is their focus on the social origins and functions of group solidarity. For Ibn Khaldun the concept of asabiyyah was central in understanding the strength of long-term group loyalties. In his view, asabiyyah was a fundamental and elementar…
Is Nationalism Intrinsically Violent
This article analyzes the complex and contradictory relationships between nationalism and organized violence. The author challenges the approaches that see nationalism as being inherently linked with violence and demonstrates that nationalist ideology by itself is rarely a main cause of hostile acts. The article focuses on the different forms of organized violence including wars, revolutions, terrorism, and genocide. It aims to show that the rela…
Forms of brutality: Towards a historical sociology of violence
Most analyses of violence in the different historical periods tend to view the modern era as significantly less violent than all of its historical predecessors. By focusing on such apparently reliable indicators as the decrease in homicide rates, the disappearance of public torture or growing civility in inter-personal relationships, many authors contend that our ancestors inhabited a substantially more violent world. In this article, I argue tha…
The Disfigured Ontology of Figurational Sociology: Norbert Elias and the Question of Violence
This article scrutinizes Norbert Elias's figurational sociology by focusing on its ontological foundations. The analytical spotlight is on the inherent tension between Elias's stance of normative neutrality and detachment, his naturalistic ontology, and an unyielding commitment to directional development. We show how Elias's social theory does not stand apart, as an external observer, from the figurations it seeks to explain. On the contrary, it …
Did Wars Make Nation‐States in the Balkans: Nationalisms, Wars and States in the 19 th and early 20 th Century South East Europe
Nationalism and protracted warfare are often seen as the most important impediments to social advancement in the Balkans. In contrast to these popular perceptions I argue that for much of its history the Balkan region was characterised by limited inter‐state violence and by notable lack of nationalist ideologies. Furthermore by comparing the processes of state and nation formation and warfare in the South East Europe with those in the Western Eur…
A Nation‐state without the nation? The trajectories of nation‐formation in Montenegro1
Following the successful referendum of May 2006, Montenegro became the last of the former Yugoslav republics to opt for an independent state. Only fifteen years earlier, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia collapsed, Montenegro was resolute to continue the Yugoslav state‐formation in a union with Serbia. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: Why did it take so much longer for the Montenegrin population to follow the…
Researching social and ethnic identity: A sceptical view
This paper focuses on the relationship between the conceptual and methodological problems in the study of social and ethnic identity. The author argues that the theoretical and conceptual deficiencies in defining and understanding the notions of “identity” and “ethnic identity” are reflected in the quality and type of research strategies used to asses empirical claims to ethnic identity. The first part of the paper critically reviews and analyses…
The mirage of Balkan Piedmont: State formation and Serbian nationalisms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
The continuous rise of the Serbian state in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is often described as a typical example of the Piedmont‐style of national unification. The conventional historiography emphasises the role popular nationalism has played in this process, making little if any distinctions between the forms of Serbian nationalisms within and outside of the Serbian state. This article challenges such interpretations and argues t…
Wars that Make States and Wars that Make Nations: Organised Violence, Nationalism and State Formation in the Balkans
Since the beginning of the 19th century the Balkans has been a synonym for aggressive nationalism and unbridled violence; the two phenomena traditionally understood to be the key obstacles for its social development. This paper contests such views by arguing that it was the absence of protracted warfare and coherent nationalist doctrines that distinguishes the history of South Eastern Europe from the rest of the continent. Drawing critically on b…
How Pacifist Were the Founding Fathers: War and Violence in Classical Sociology
Most commentators agree that the study of war and collective violence remains the Achilles heel of sociology. However, this apparent neglect is often wrongly attributed to the classics of social thought. This article contests such a view by arguing: (1) that many classics were preoccupied with the study of war and violence and have devised complex concepts and models to detect and analyse its social manifestations; and (2) most of the classical s…
Rational choice theory and the sociology of ethnic relations: A Critique
This article is a critique of the main principles of the rational choice theory in the way they have been developed and applied in the sociology of ethnic relations. The general argument of the essay is that although rational choice theory is presented as a successful explanatory alternative to post-essentialist criticism of social science, its explanatory value is limited. The author focuses on four central criticisms of the theory: its circular…
The act of killing: Understanding the Emotional Dynamics of Violence on the Battlefield
The killing of human beings is one of the defining features of war. Yet there has not been much research on understanding its emotional dynamics. The act of close-range killing in war is often interpreted through the two contrasting perspectives: the neo-Darwinian approaches which see killing as an optimal tactic of genetic survival and the micro-sociological perspectives which centre on the tension and fear that arise in an inability to forge ef…
Nationalism, war and social cohesion
Most studies of nationalism and war focus on the direct causal relationship between the two. Whereas the naturalist theories see strong national attachments as a primary cause of war, the formativist approaches understand nationalism as an inevitable product of warfare. This paper challenges both of these leading interpretations by problematizing the nature of group solidarity in the large scale violent conflicts. The author develops an alternati…
Ethnic Distance, Power and War: The Case of Croatian Students
This article examines dimensions of ethnic distance in two wartime surveys of university students in Croatia. The data from the surveys is interpreted together with the content analysis of the Croatian daily newspaper vjesnik. The article draws its central conclusion from the striking similarities between the media's depiction of various ethnic groups and the dimensions of ethnic distance towards these groups. In 1992 the prime targets of ethnic …
The Return of War in Europe: Contemporary Sociology and Organised Violence
Few social scientists expected another major inter-state war in Europe. The dominant positions either confine warfare to the dustbin of European history or downplay its significance in late modernity. Sociologists of war have been less surprised by recent developments, however. In a wider socio-historical context warfare remains a crucial catalyst of social change. No other social phenomenon has continuously influenced the social world to such an…
Organized Callousness: Gaza and the Sociology of War
The ongoing war in Gaza has generated extensive polemic among scholars and the general public.1 Some have described this conflict as a novel form of warfare. The deeply asymmetric character of this
The moral fog of war and historical sociology
Hans-Herbert Kögler offers an insightful analysis and a potent moral call to support the defence of Ukraine. This is a sensible moral position that I also share. However, I question Kögler's approach which overemphasises the ethical arguments alone. I argue that wars do not allow for moral absolutism of any kind and that the best one can do in the conditions of warfare is to endorse a version of contextual morality. Furthermore, I make a case for…
Imagined Communities and Imaginary Plots: Nationalisms, Conspiracies, and Pandemics in the Longue Durée
The outbreaks of major pandemics have historically been associated with the proliferation of conspiracy theories. This article explores what role conspiratorial narratives have played in the development of different “imagined communities” in the premodern, modern, and contemporary worlds. I argue that premodern conspiratorial narratives were mostly focused on eschatological and theological images, aiming to blame and delegitimise the religious Ot…
Nationalism and War in the 21st‐Century Europe
Since the end of WWII, many analysts were adamant that Europe is a continent of peace and geopolitical stability. The influential authors were arguing that warfare is experiencing a historical decline and that many forms of organised violence belong to the dustbin of European history. The leading scholars of organised violence tended to focus on civil wars, revolutions and insurgencies on other continents. The dominant view was that Europe is unl…
Forging the Nation-centric World: Imperial Rule and the Homogenisation of Discontent in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878-1918)
Historical sociologists have questioned the idea that nationalism and imperialism are mutually exclusive phenomena. In contrast to traditional historiography that depicted empires as 'the prison houses of nations' contemporary scholarship emphasises the structural and ideological ambiguities that characterised the 19th century European imperial projects. Hence instead of 'popular longings' for national independence the focus has shifted to the ex…
Ethnic Distance, Power and War: The Case of Croatian Students
This article examines dimensions of ethnic distance in two wartime surveys of university students in Croatia. The data from the surveys is interpreted together with the content analysis of the Croatian daily newspaper vjesnik. The article draws its central conclusion from the striking similarities between the media's depiction of various ethnic groups and the dimensions of ethnic distance towards these groups. In 1992 the prime targets of ethnic …
Globalism and nationalism: Which one is bad
The author differentiates between globalism, an ideology, and globalisation, a process that affects us all. He compares globalism and nationalism, considering the positive, negative, and similar, aspects of each, using examples from Eastern Europe where a struggle is taking place between the two, interdependent, ideologies. He advocates 'the constant presence of both to avoid the hegemony of either
Making Sense of Collectivity: Ethnicity, Nationalism and Globalisation
Ideology After Poststructuralism
From ‘Organic’ Legislators to ‘Organicistic’ Interpreters: Intellectuals in Yugoslavia and Post‐Yugoslav States
The article is divided into three parts. In the first part I review and compare the two leading sociological theories on intellectuals, those of Z. Bauman and A. Gramsci whose concepts are later critically examined to form the basis of my argument. The second part of the article draws on Gramsci's typology of organic and traditional intelligentsia and Bauman's distinction between interpreters and legislators in order to identify and assess the pr…
Rational choice theory and the sociology of ethnic relations: A Critique
This article is a critique of the main principles of the rational choice theory in the way they have been developed and applied in the sociology of ethnic relations. The general argument of the essay is that although rational choice theory is presented as a successful explanatory alternative to post-essentialist criticism of social science, its explanatory value is limited. The author focuses on four central criticisms of the theory: its circular…
Researching social and ethnic identity: A sceptical view
This paper focuses on the relationship between the conceptual and methodological problems in the study of social and ethnic identity. The author argues that the theoretical and conceptual deficiencies in defining and understanding the notions of “identity” and “ethnic identity” are reflected in the quality and type of research strategies used to asses empirical claims to ethnic identity. The first part of the paper critically reviews and analyses…
The Sociology of Ethnicity
Spanning classic sociology to current debates, this book synthesizes the leading sociological interpretations of ethnic relations and provides a coherent theoretical framework for its analysis
Divine Ethnies ” and “Sacred Nations”: Anthony D. Smith and the Neo-Durkhemian Theory of Nationalism
This article is an analysis of the epistemological foundations of Anthony D. Smith's theory of nationalism. The author argues that Smith's theory can be properly understood only when one engages more directly with the broader sociological worldview that his position is an integral part of—Durkhemianism. Although Smith's vision of the social world goes a step beyond classical Durkhemianism, the historicist, collectivist, and idealist nature of his…
The sociology of ethnicity
Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches
The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
Ethnic and National Identity: The Conceptual Critique
Identity is not something tangible or visible: you cannot touch, smell, taste or see it. Yet many claim that its presence is so prevalent today that nearly everything has become a matter of identity. Television, radio and newspapers bombard us on everyday basis with information on how ‘the very identities of numerous cultures or ethnic groups are threatened’. We hear over and over again, explicitly or covertly, how our national identity has to be…
An Operational Phantom
Chapter 1 explored briefly the conceptual origins and the current use to which idioms of ethnic and national identity are placed in sociology and beyond the academic world. The analysis established that the notion of ‘identity’ in most of its contemporary uses suffers from acute conceptual weaknesses — it is either utilised in a restricted and essentialist or an all-embracing and vague way — which makes it dispensable and possibly redundant as a …
Identity as Ideology: Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism
Despite profound disagreement on whether identities are essential or existential, primordial or constructed, singular or multiple, there is little dispute over whether identities exist or not. In this
Debate On Michael Mann'sThe Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought
Ernest Gellner was a unique scholar whose work covered areas as diverse as social anthropology, analytical philosophy, the sociology of the Islamic world, nationalism, psychoanalysis, East European transformations and kinship structures. Despite this diversity, there is an exceptional degree of unity and coherence in Gellner's work with his distinctly modernist, rationalist and liberal world-view evident in everything he wrote. His central proble…
A Nation‐state without the nation? The trajectories of nation‐formation in Montenegro1
Following the successful referendum of May 2006, Montenegro became the last of the former Yugoslav republics to opt for an independent state. Only fifteen years earlier, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia collapsed, Montenegro was resolute to continue the Yugoslav state‐formation in a union with Serbia. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: Why did it take so much longer for the Montenegrin population to follow the…
The ubiquity of power
Solidary killers and egoistic pacifists: Violence, war and social action
The Sociology of New Wars? Assessing the Causes and Objectives of Contemporary Violent Conflicts
The recent accounts of the new war paradigm have been thoroughly scrutinized in a variety of disciplines from security studies and international relations to political economy. The general trend is to focus on the scope, methods, tactics, strategies, forms of war, and/or the level of atrocity. However, there has been little sustained attempt to assess structural causes and the arguments about the changing aims of contemporary warfare. This paper …
Civil Society Theory: Smith
Community, Types of
The Sociology of War and Violence
War is a highly complex and dynamic form of social conflict. This book demonstrates the importance of using sociological tools to understand the changing character of war and organised violence. The author offers an original analysis of the historical and contemporary impact that coercion and warfare have on the transformation of social life, and vice versa. Although war and violence were decisive components in the formation of modernity most ana…
Nationalism, war and social cohesion
Most studies of nationalism and war focus on the direct causal relationship between the two. Whereas the naturalist theories see strong national attachments as a primary cause of war, the formativist approaches understand nationalism as an inevitable product of warfare. This paper challenges both of these leading interpretations by problematizing the nature of group solidarity in the large scale violent conflicts. The author develops an alternati…
Sociology (89 works) · Political science (82 works) · Law (69 works) · Politics (59 works) · Law (42 works) · Nationalism (37 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Epistemology (30 works) · Social science (27 works) · Ideology (26 works)