East European Politics and

Societies
Volume 25 Number 4
November 2011 834-851
© 2011 Sage Publications
“State Pride” 10.1177/0888325411426886
http://eeps.sagepub.com
hosted at
Politics of LGBT Rights http://online.sagepub.com

and Democratisation in
“European Serbia”
Marek Mikuš
London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

This article analyses from an anthropological perspective the 2010 Belgrade Pride
Parade, the first state-supported Parade in Serbia, as a part of the building of a demo-
cratic and European Serbian nation. In their discursive framing of the Parade and mak-
ing claims on the state to take it under its auspices, the organising NGOs bound the
event to the EU integration process of Serbia. This policy link helped them forge a
political alliance with the state, but was also instrumentalised by the government to
avoid an ideological conflict with the opponents of the Parade. Owing to the perception
of the alliance as “elitist” and to the militarised and depoliticised nature of the state’s
involvement, the event materially actualised and reified rather than transcended the
enduring conflict of liberal and collectivist citizenship visions in Serbia. The article
argues that the overall discourse of the government on Europeanisation is informed by
the same top-down and instrumental logic. However, members of civil society develop
political subjectivities which demand active citizen participation and critically engage
with the discourse to restore its democratising potential. Similarly, the emerging
“populist” politics of LGBT rights, illustrated by the pop singer Jelena Karleuša’s par-
ticipation in the domestic debate, are better placed to face the legacies of socialist and
ethnonationalist nation-building than the human rights and Europeanisation approaches.

Keywords:  civil society, EU integration, LGBT rights, political subjectivity, Serbia

I n June 2001, the first Pride Parade (Parada ponosa) in Belgrade ended being
attacked by a thousand-strong crowd. Tapes of the incident show the vastly out-
numbered police intervening, but the football hooligans and rightists clearly domi-
nate the scene. Understandably, then, much conjecture in Belgrade civil society
circles prior to the 2010 Parade centred on security. Some claimed that after
two criticized failures to take the Parade under its auspices, in 2004 and 2009, the

Author’s Note: This work is a product of doctoral research supported by an LSE PhD Scholarship and
the International Visegrad Fund [Out-Going Scholarships number 51000924 and 51100669]. An initial
version of this paper was presented at the Regional Research Promotion Programme Annual Conference
in Montenegro in May 2011; I would like to thank the participants for their comments. Deborah James
and Mathijs Pelkmans, my supervisors at the LSE, helped me design and get ready for my research. Goran
Dokić has read and provided invaluable criticism on the paper. I am especially indebted to all individuals
and organizations in Serbia and elsewhere who consented to participate in my fieldwork; this work would
not be possible without your generosity and spirit of cooperation.

834

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  835

government needs things to go well. Others feared another bloodshed. Conspiracy

theories, naturally, also proliferated—the police is likely on “their” side, so it will
not go out of its way to protect the Parade.
On that sunny Indian Summer morning of 10 October 2010, I and my friends
from Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF), a Belgrade NGO, approached the
calmest of three “entry points” to the designated downtown area. Normally busy
boulevards were now hermetically closed and eerily vacant, patrolled by a helicopter
and five thousand policemen, gendarmes and military policemen. We only saw few
opponents of the Parade, but our seemingly relaxed conversation barely masked the
tension. Upon entering, we had to identify ourselves to the police, who noted our
particulars on a scrap of paper—possibly not up to the highest standards of personal
data protection. I overlooked this in the online security instructions, and entertaining
various scenarios of the event, I decided not to carry valuables including identity
documents. Fortunately, Andreja, whom I knew as a staunch critic of the Serbian
police, eloquently vouched for me with a slightly unexpected cooperativeness, and
we finally entered. While we were listening to the speeches, parading, and leaving,
in armoured police cars, the closing party in the Student Cultural Centre which, I
suspect, never really took off, six thousand young men were fighting the police and
destroying property. About one hundred fifty people, mostly policemen, were
injured. However, the blockade weathered the onslaught, and two hundred fifty
attackers were held for questioning.
Anthropologists suggested that the state should be studied as a set of localised
practices and representations through which people engage with it.1 At the Parade,
the security forces embodied the material presence of the state, while the govern-
ment’s discourses represented this involvement as a particular policy. Government
officials used the governmental-technological language of the state’s monopoly of
power2 to emphasise its ability to enforce rule of law and public order. The spokes-
man of the Republic Public Prosecution Office, for instance, declared somewhat
threateningly that “nobody is stronger than the state.”3 Less frequent but not absent
was the abstract discourse of liberalism and human rights. For instance, President of
Serbia Boris Tadić stated that “Serbia will guarantee the exercise of human rights for
all citizens disregarding their diversity and attempts to limit their freedom by vio-
lence will not succeed.”4
Significantly, the discourse of the government, but also of the organisers, unam-
biguously linked the Parade to the European integration of Serbia. Minister of
Internal Affairs Ivica Dačić,5 factually a key ally of the organisers, said not him but
citizens decided the Parade will happen—by toppling the former regime of Slobo-
dan Milošević in 2000 and choosing to “enter Europe and accept European values.”
He added that “Europe” had been “attacking him for a year” about the cancelled
2009 Parade.6 At the Parade itself, Vincent Degert, Head of the Delegation of the
EU to Serbia, held the first speech; also speaking were Head of Council of Europe
Delegation to Serbia, Head of OSCE Mission to Serbia and a Dutch member of the
European Parliament. The only government’s representative was Svetozar Ćiplić,

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

836  East European Politics and Societies

Minister of Human and Minority Rights. In their rather predictable and formal
speeches in English, the foreign guests repeatedly referred to the EU, whose flag
could be seen in the crowd, along with rainbow flags, a purple Union Jack, but no
Serbian flag. Surrounded by the globalised iconography of the LGBT movement
and cheesy Western pop, I could not help feeling that almost the only local thing
about the Parade were the militarised, violent conditions under which it was hap-
pening. If the speakers mentioned Serbia, they mostly denoted it negatively, as a site
of deviation from the European norms of respect for human rights that the Parade
begins to rectify.
Taking cues from the anthropology of policy, I conceptualise policies as enacting
nation-building projects by tapping into citizens’ everyday lifeworlds and reconfig-
uring their subjectivities.7 Here, I am specifically concerned with the attempted
building of a democratic and European Serbian nation. What “political subjectivi-
ties,” conceived as self-understandings related to the possibility and desirability of
political action,8 do people develop to engage with this policy? How do various
strategically chosen practices and discourses reflect, exploit and transform the dis-
cursive link between “Europeanisation” and democratisation?
My general method is one of “studying through”—tracing the trajectory of a
policy from its discursive sources through to those affected by it.9 I first establish
key features and functions of the performative discourse which implements the
Europeanisation policy. I then analyse what political subjectivities the members of
civil society, with whom I have been working since September 2010, develop in
relation to Europeanisation. I will argue they critically engage and recompose the
discourse, revealing that Europeanisation is not a set of self-evident supranational
institutions “impacting” on national institutions but rather a multi-actor process of
negotiating “ways of governing and being governed through language, practices and
techniques.”10 My interlocutors develop subjectivities which require active citizen
participation for Europeanisation to become democratisation and broad social trans-
formation. I then show how various participants read and acted upon Europeanisa-
tion in the context of the Parade. I will argue that the nature of state’s involvement
in the Parade and of its political alliance with the organisers, framed and mediated
by Europeanisation, interacted with the legacies of past nation-building projects so
as to reinforce the perception of LGBT rights by their opponents as something for-
eign and “elitist.” Finally, I contrast this with a different, “populist” kind of advo-
cacy of the same cause to point to strategies of promoting democratic change other
than those which emphasise Europeanisation.

“Europe Has No Alternative”: Hegemonic

Performative Discourse and its Functions

Nowadays, the discourses of Serbian media, politics and civil sector seem to
explode with the word “Europe” and its derivatives. On Serbia’s “path to Europe,”

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  837

her citizens hear daily about “European values” (evropske vrednosti) and “standards”
being, or failing to be, “promoted,” “introduced,” “accepted” and “adopted.” RTS,
the state TV, brands itself the “public service of European Serbia.” Several dailies
and weeklies publish EU-funded and themed supplements; for instance, the subtitle
of the one published by the Danas daily reads Serbia Next to Europe with Europe to
Europe. An EU-funded project titled, in imperative, Speak European, trains civil and
public servants “to strengthen [their] broad understanding of the values, standards
and practices of the European Union.”11
In the second round of his reelection in 2008, President Tadić ran under the slo-
gan “Let’s win Europe together!” He subsequently led the winning coalition of the
2008 Serbian parliamentary and local elections and Vojvodina parliamentary elec-
tion called For a European Serbia—Boris Tadić. One of the coalition’s billboards
claimed that “Europe means jobs for 200,000 unemployed.” Many of my interview-
ees associated the catchphrase “Europe has no alternative,” or “the EU has no alter-
native,” with the incumbent coalition. Its representatives, including Tadić, frequently
used it in the run-up to the 2008 elections12 and continue to use it today.13
What can be inferred from these ubiquitous references to Europe? First, they
reveal the extent to which popular and government-promoted imaginings of the
future Serbia became linked to the idea of Europe.14 Denisa Kostovicova observed
that post-Milošević “democratic elites” merged into one two meanings of Europe—
its experiential/cultural (Europe-as-identity) and procedural/institutional aspect
(Europe-as-EU).15 This “Europe/EU” was posited as a democratic polity where
Serbia has a rightful place. Notably, these references to Europe are performative
utterances.16 Their purpose is not to claim something, but to do something, such as
make it true that Serbia is European, or reject the existence of alternatives to
Europe/EU.
The functionality of these references depends on their conspicuous vagueness
which gives the receiver a considerable liberty to project her own meanings onto the
message. Тhis is especially true of syntagmas like “European Serbia” and “European
values” used by the media and politicians whose catchphrases the media transmit.
Undoubtedly, more analytic media stories or the government’s policy documents
may make an effort to give these phrases a specific meaning. However, the public
arguably comes into contact rather with the former type of usage.
Thus, “European Serbia” is a deliberately unspecified better Serbia to which
politicians promise to lead the nation by joining the Europe/EU. Similarly, Jessica
Greenberg found that the student activists with whom she worked in early 2000s see
Serbia’s EU membership “as a mechanism to circulate the entire country into Europe
through a collective relocation that promises normalcy . . . on a national scale”.17
However, I will argue below that the manner in which people approach this nation-
building project might be changing. My interlocutors attempt to gain ownership and
restore the transformative potential of the “European Serbia” policy by putting for-
ward their own meanings and orientations to Europe.

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

838  East European Politics and Societies

“Putting Our Backyards to Order”: Europe

and Civil Society Political Subjectivities

This section explores orientations of civil society members to the elements of the
“European Serbia” policy. Here, the term “civil society” has its normative meaning
prevalent in Serbia, limited to voluntary, grassroots organizations promoting democ-
racy, liberalism, cosmopolitanism and anti-nationalism.18 Employing this ideologi-
cal self-conception analytically risks overlooking the strong “illiberal” civil society19
and links between political parties and NGOs in Serbia.20 For these and other rea-
sons, it must be a subject of analysis itself.21
The Serbian concept is not unique—in a similar vein, civil society in Central
Europe invented itself as the autonomous and morally pure “other” of the commu-
nist state and the leading force of post-communist democratisation.22 However, the
Serbian civil society assumes a specific form due to its association with the folk
category of “Other Serbia.” Since 1992, the opposition to the Milošević regime,
operating largely through civil society organizations (CSOs), was identifying itself
as the “Other Serbia” of urban intellectuals, artists and professionals. This identifica-
tion was in contrast to the “First Serbia” of rural and semi-urban groups and the
regime which they supported.23 The binary reflects a widespread folk model of
politics and society which draws links, on the one hand, between political orienta-
tions and aesthetic forms, and on the other hand, socio-cultural classifications. Thus,
it associates conservative and nationalist views with “peasants,” “peasant-urbanites”
and other “Balkanised”24 groups, whereas the cultured urban middle class is seen as
inherently cosmopolitan, liberal and “civil.”25 Significantly, the adjective građanski,
derived from grad (“city”), translates as “urban” as well as “civil.”26
While this folk theory of “two Serbias” was especially strong in the 1990s, it
continues to shape public discourse. Liberal commentators accept their “Other Ser-
bia” identity but acknowledge that the “First Serbia” is also constituted by many
NGOs and cultural elites, thus somewhat refining the theory.27 Conservative com-
mentators coined the term “missionary intelligentsia” for their rivals and accuse
them of Balkanising its own people.28 They take for granted the theory’s assumption
that the “Other Serbia” and hence “civil society” is unequivocally pro-European.
Thus, the Pečat magazine condemns “euroreformers” in the same breath with
“Other-Serbs” (drugosrbijanci)29 and Slobodan Antonić talks about “the ‘Other’
Serbia [who] boast about their European orientation.”30 I will now explore how this
presumption of “Europhilia” of civil society plays out empirically, and juxtapose my
findings based on participant-observation and interview data with the hegemonic
policy discourse.31
None of the participants expressed outright hostility to the EU, and hardly any
believed Serbia has a credible alternative to it. Some argued that Serbia already is
European as its strongest cultural and economic links are to Europe. To that extent,

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  839

the examined presumption is not invalidated. However, their orientations to the

studied concepts were considerably more reflexive and diverse than the simplified
narrative would have it, which indicates its limited explanatory power. The varia-
tions reflected their biographies, values and social, political and institutional posi-
tions, but also their incisive analyses of political process of which they are subjects.
On many occasions, they emerged as competent “native anthropologists.”
Running through their comments was a clear association between Europe/EU and
the interrelated ideas of “system,” “order,” “normalcy,” and “modernity.” Acceding
to the EU, the interviewees reasoned, is a chance for Serbia to become a “normal”
and “orderly country” (uređena zemlja) “where rules are being respected.” She
would achieve “the rule of law” or “modern system of governance” with “function-
ing institutions,” they reasoned.
Anthropologists of post-Yugoslav societies have already documented this asso-
ciation between the ideas of Europe and normalcy. The set of supposed European
norms is looked to as an antithesis and exit from the “abnormality” of transforma-
tions of past twenty years.32 Thus, when the Yugoslav wars, an epitome of Balkanic
chaos, broke out, Matthijs van de Port observed that Serbian journalists and citizens
discussed them “as if they felt constantly under European scrutiny and had to justify
their actions to Europe all the time.”33 If the (simulated) European gaze acts as the
arbiter of civilization and order, it is only because Europe, owing to long-standing
Balkanist discourses, is seen as embodying these properties.
Today, when Serbia enjoys a relative stability, this symbolic value of Europe
remains but is phrased pragmatically. The emphasis on order, rule of law, or strong
institutions as European qualities was more common than associations with loftier
values which the EU proclaims its own, such as tolerance and respect for human
rights, peace and cooperation between nations, or indeed democracy. This might
reflect the blending of discourse on Europe with the global “good governance” dis-
course34 which seems to take hold in the popular expectations of politics in Serbia.35
Symptomatically, at the November 2010 session of the Democratic Political Forum
debate series, the participants seemed to find it natural to assess the state of institutions—
which was the advertised topic—largely through the prism of the European Com-
mission (EC) 2010 Progress Report on Serbia.
On the other hand, there was no shortage of critical views of the EU. Many inter-
locutors, including some rather Euro-optimist, saw it as an incoherent and unprin-
cipled identity. They doubted there is anything like European values beyond official
proclamations and referred to various instances when the EU applied “double stan-
dards” to candidate or member countries.
More often than with the EU, people found fault with Serbian politicians who
“insult intelligence” of citizens by “using the EU as an election slogan” and “bidding
with years/deadlines” of Serbia’s accession. Rather than working on real priorities,
such as endemic corruption, they introduce unimportant reforms. Some suspected

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

840  East European Politics and Societies

that “the whole story about Europe” is only to “make people blind” (da se ljudima
zamažu oči) to real problems. Europe has become a “cliché” and a “solution for
everything,” some said alluding to the blanket quality of the hegemonic discourse.
This has become especially clear in the case of oft-cited “European values.”
At the BCIF’s strategic planning workshop, my group was just trying to define
the NGO’s vision of future Serbia when we got to the issue of EU membership.
Vladimir commented that Serbia might become a member state, but what kind of EU
will it be then? France and Italy are considering scrapping the Schengen Agreement
because of the influx of North African refugees. “European values are but values
which dominate in the EU at a given point,” he said. Serbian politicians like to talk
about them because it suits them to say those are values enforced upon us by Brus-
sels. Vladimir was not alone in seeing the syntagma as open to manipulation and
perhaps even devoid of any substantial meaning.
Many interlocutors decried the undemocratic character of integration. Politicians
“do not explain anything to anyone,” they talk about the accession as a dogma which
cannot be questioned and discussed, without ever presenting an “analysis of costs
and gains.” Laws required by the Union are being adopted in a sped-up procedure,
without public discussion or adjustment to the Serbian context. Some believed that
as a result of this, the “ordinary citizen” believes that Serbia “has to” enter the EU.
Thus, while my interlocutors considered the integration process a chance for
progressive social transformation, they felt its implementation was disabling their
political agency. They often tried to resolve this contradiction by shifting emphasis
to the national and community levels as the loci of change. Rather than seeing devel-
opment as necessary to accede to the EU, a Euro-sceptic interviewee said, politicians
should recognise the importance of “our individual development.” Serbia cannot
expect the EU to do reforms for her, and she should have a national “strategy” of
reforms and problem solving.
Some interviewees went further and stressed that citizens should “put to order”
(urediti) their own society. Dušan, NGO worker from a midsize city, said:

I advocate the kind of stance that if we, everyone of us, would put our own backyards
to order, houses, parks and the like, and that applies also to the state, its enterprises, the
whole system, [then] we wouldn’t even need Europe. (interview by author, Valjevo, 20
December 2010)

However, my interlocutors figured politicians and citizens do not understand or

downplay this key aspect of integration and instead talk about benefiting from EU
funds, or imagine that being in the Union equals instant prosperity, or “driving in a
jeep” as Dušan put it. Some commented that the problem rests in the Serbian “atti-
tude to work” or “working habits,”36 appropriating this time-honoured Balkanist
motive for self-criticism.

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  841

Greenberg found that student activists she worked with in early 2000s see Ser-
bia’s EU membership “as a mechanism to circulate the entire country into Europe
through a collective relocation that promises normalcy . . . on a national scale.”37
The vernacular discourses I describe continue to express this quest for normalcy, but the
actors and agency to achieve it are scaled down from the abstracted notions of the
EU and the country. Contrary to the politicians’ strategy, they bring agency and
responsibility, at least as a potentiality, closer to citizens—either by refocusing the
attention on the flaws of national elites, or by arguing the citizens must reform them-
selves. Skeptical about “European values” (or their automatic transposition through
integration), they call for indigenous development and change of values. This rheto-
ric echoes the “temporality, agency, and processual nature of normativity”38 that
anthropologists found central to the asserting of the multiplicity of forms summarily
known as democracy. It represents a move from being a passive object of European
gaze and intervention to becoming an active, self-governing subject. The critiques
of the undemocratic nature of integration further attest to this frustrated, but not
abandoned, wish for transformative agency.

“State Pride”: The State Orchestration of

a Clash of Citizenship Visions

The 2010 Parade was seen as a watershed in the history of LGBT rights in Serbia,
but also of Serbia’s European integration. The EU has repeatedly criticised the gov-
ernment’s inadequate response to high prevalence of homophobia.39 While in 2009
the European Commission found the authorities “unable to guarantee the safety of
the participants,”40 this time it acknowledged the Parade as “a step forward in pro-
moting constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights.”41 A European Parliament
resolution stated that “freedom of expression and of assembly are core European
values” and that by backing up the Parade, the state showed “commitment to uphold
EU standards of tolerance.”42
The Parade was organized by two Belgrade NGOs, Gay Straight Alliance (GSA)
and Queeria Centre43; an informal group from Novi Sad officially “supported” the
Parade. I interviewed Lazar Pavlović, the President of GSA, in their spacious office
close to the pedestrian Kneza Mihaila Street, one of the most central locations in
Belgrade. To my question what made the state to throw its weight behind the Parade
at last, he said:

We used very consciously the fact that Serbia finds itself in the process of EU integra-
tion, that the Progress Report of the European Commission was going to be important,
that in the meetings with high state officials which they had during 2010, one of the
really important subjects was precisely the Pride Parade. (interview by author, Belgrade,
30 March 2011)

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

842  East European Politics and Societies

Exerting pressure was possible through the “political section” of the EU

Delegation which regularly consults GSA and other LGBT organizations on the state
of LGBT rights in Serbia. This information is then reflected in the Progress Reports
and thus impacts on the overall evaluation of Serbia’s advance toward EU member-
ship. Lazar told me that in the period immediately before and after the Parade, GSA
was reporting to the Delegation on a daily basis.
This strategy of linking the Parade and LGBT rights with the EU integration
enabled the organising NGOs to form a political alliance with the state officially
committed to the integration. The state needed to convince the EU that it takes the
anti-discrimination policy seriously. The NGOs could exploit this to have the state
protect the Parade. Lazar told me unambiguously that in post-Milošević Serbia,
cooperation with parties and state institutions is necessary but not all LGBT organi-
zations understand that. Boban Stojanović from the Queeria Centre implied this was
the case with the organisers of the cancelled 2009 Parade, which is why Queeria
eventually left the process (interview by author, Belgrade, 4 April 2011).
Starting in March 2010, GSA conducted a series of meetings with all but three44
parliamentary parties and representatives of multiple state institutions.45 Having
secured support for the Parade, GSA initiated the formation of an “informal co-ordinating
body.”46 As Lazar said, “we wanted to relax the pressure on the police a bit, because
in 2009 all responsibility was thrown on the police and the Organization Committee.
. . . We wanted that other state institutions accept responsibility too” (interview by
author, Belgrade, 30 March 2011). However, cooperation with the police, or more
precisely with the Ministry of Internal Affairs as multiple police units were involved,
proved key in practice. According to Boban, “only with them there was something
concrete, those other meetings were completely . . . loss of time, unconstructive.”
While the Organization Committee met with the coordinating body three or four
times, there were ten or more meetings with the police (interview by author,
Belgrade, 4 April 2011). This indicates that security forces were what tangibly (liter-
ally, in some cases) mediated the state not only to the participants and attackers but
also to the organisers.
The opponents did not overlook the association between the event and the EU
integration. The caption of an online video titled “Against the European Shame
Parade” reads: “The real Serbia AGAINST the occupation of false European values
and their mercenaries!”47 In a recent talk, representatives of SNP Naši 1389, a
nationalist-conservative organization, spoke about legal sanctions against their com-
rades, including some due to their anti-Parade activities, as “the regime’s attempt to
break the last resistance to the Euro-Atlantic integration of Serbia.”48 The defence
lawyer in the trial with members of Obraz, another organization suspected of vio-
lence during the Parade, said that “this Orthodox youth will fall victim to Serbia’s
entry to the EU.”49
The state stood to gain most from framing the unpopular Parade as a part of
the broad Europeanisation policy. As I already hinted, this strategy enabled it to

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  843

(partially) externalise the responsibility for the Parade while taking the credit. Maja50
told me: “I think the motivation of our government was, unfortunately, only to show
how it aspires to those European standards . . . but that is just an illusion, what we
call a shell (školjka). Inside, in principle . . . I think a bigger part of the government
didn’t support it at all.” However, although the EU is certainly aware of this, “it has
to reward” the state (interview by author, Belgrade, 28 March 2011). The evidence
of this already happening is clear. Apart from words of appreciation in the quoted
documents, the Council of the EU made a step forward in the integration two weeks
after the Parade by forwarding Serbia’s application to the EC. The decision was
expected in that time, but it is noteworthy that the Parade was scheduled for the run-
up to it.
The state might have achieved a degree of success with the “Other Serbia” by
demonstrating a readiness to intervene in the interest of its political visions. On the
day of the Parade and in its aftermath, my friends from the ranks of civil society—
who supported the Parade disregarding their sexual preference—complied with the
instructions of the police and repeatedly called on the state to “arrest” and “put to
prison” the perpetrators and organisers of violence. As Andreja drove me home on
that day, insisting that walking might not be safe, she remarked that nobody would
dare to “disrupt public peace and order” like that in socialist Yugoslavia. This part
of the public did not mind the involvement of security forces; they criticised its
inadequacy. Many, including some of the interviewed LGBT activists, believed that
the state did not do enough to prevent the violence although it surely could. Boban
thought this was intentional: “Everything that happened leaves many questions.
How did they organise, how come nobody knew about it, where did the containers
with stones or concrete come from, why did they gather by the church, why weren’t
they dispersed in the morning as they were gathering, and so on. It’s that principle,
like, the Pride’s fine, but you’re fine too. And then we’re all just OK. And that hap-
pens all the time [in Serbia]” (interview by author, Belgrade, 4 April 2011).
This suggests another strategy which the state adopted toward the arguably larger
number of active or passive opponents of the Parade. Apart from communicating it
as something required by the EU, it avoided open ideological confrontation with the
opponents by condemning and legally sanctioning the violence as such, not as
homophobic or ideology-based. The few attackers punished so far were found guilty
of criminal acts like “preventing a serviceman in performance of duty”51 and “vio-
lent behaviour at a public meeting.”52 In June 2011, GSA announced that a first-
instance court passed the very first judgment on homophobic hate speech in Serbia,
but this relates to the 2009 Parade (e-mail to author, 7 June 2011). Government
officials consistently referred to the attackers as “young people” or even “children” who
were “manipulated,” or in a harsher—but still de-ideologising—key, as “hooligans,”
“vandals” or “disturbers” (izgrednici). The spokeswoman (and currently Vice-
President) of the Democratic Party Jelena Trivan explicitly said:

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

844  East European Politics and Societies

They are hooligan gangs whose behaviour follows the same pattern, no matter if it’s
about a football match or an ideological protest. They are hooligans and not fighters for
any moral values or principles.53

The involvement in the protests of far-right movements and the Serbian Orthodox
Church speaks to the contrary. At the Parade, I witnessed a scene attesting to this
relationship. Approaching the Ascension Church, the paraders started to whistle and
shout derisively. At the gate of the churchyard, behind the fence, a small group of
mostly middle-aged men silently stood, headed by an Orthodox priest holding up a
large wooden cross. His dour face, hard look, and pressed lips made the meaning of
his gesture clear—he was guarding the holy lands against the imminent contamina-
tion by sin.
The opponents’ ideology is simultaneously inchoate and multifaceted. It inter-
prets the LGBT rights movement as an assault on the collective body ethnonational,
equated with Orthodoxy and heteronormative masculinity. This is a conflict between
“elitist” and “populist” visions of citizenship, its entitlements and regimes of inclu-
sion and exclusion. It is about two fundamentally different concepts of gender, class,
national belonging and the very ontology (individualist/collectivist) of the citizen
subject.54
Thus, the “populists” chanted “we’ll fuck the faggots,” denoting them as femi-
nine subjects, and called on the police to “go to Kosovo” rather than “babysit the
faggots.” They attacked a mammography facility sponsored by B92, a media corpo-
ration associated with the “Other Serbia,” as well as the seats of the Democratic
Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Socialist Party of Serbia, whose repre-
sentatives supported the Parade. Organisers and attendees of a nonviolent protest on
the eve of the Parade insisted the state should be concerned with economic hardship
and demographic decline, not with “trivial problems of one aggressive minority
group.”55 Similarly, days before the Parade, my scandalised cab driver construed as
a fulfillment of particular, elite privilege that in the midst of poverty, “five thousand
policemen will babysit a thousand faggots,” while possibly not applying the same
severe criticism to more endemic security issues with football hooligans. The asso-
ciation with the EU, while usefully spreading the blame, possibly reinforced the
perception that the Parade represents some distant, alien interests.
On the “elitist” side of the church fence, I kept hearing comments that the attack-
ers came (or someone brought them) to Belgrade from “small towns and villages”
and that they slept rough in parks. On the eve of the Parade, a friend from BCIF told
me how her partially sighted acquaintance was approached by a boy handing out
anti-Parade leaflets, and when he asked him to read them aloud for him, it transpired
the boy was illiterate. Neither the role of the Church went unnoticed. On the B92
website, readers advised the state to “first arrest the monks who are massively
involved in all this, and then take it a hooligan by hooligan.”56

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  845

The fact remains that the Parade and limited repressive action against its oppo-
nents was carried through and the state consolidated its “elitist” alliance with (a part
of) liberal civil society. This was how the “populists,” but also other commentators,
read it. The interviewed LGBT activists not involved in the Parade’s organization
repeatedly designated it as the “State Pride” (državni prajd). They were also critical
of the fact that Boris Milićević, founder of GSA, joined the Socialist Party of Serbia
(led by Minister Dačić) and, in December 2010, became a member of its Central
Committee.57
While lines of criticism were many, those which interest me here evoke the pre-
scription that CSOs should be “independent” from the state and political organiza-
tions. That makes them consistent with the mentioned Eastern European idea of civil
society as well as the currently dominant ideologies of the latter, be they “neoliberal”
or “poststructuralist.”58 Other critiques, claiming the organisers “monopolised” the
Pride or ignored the “real” interests of the LGBT population, mirror the accusations
of elitism and lack of grassroots base often made, within the Balkan civil society,
against human rights NGOs.59 Recent work in the anthropology of development
guides me to question the normative foundations of these critiques, but I also postu-
late that actors have a degree of structurally constrained agency when deciding what
resources to employ in what manner.60 Post factum, the organisers were indeed
aware of the criticisms and they probably could anticipate many of them before the
Parade. My intention here, however, is not to second-guess their motives, but to
understand the social construction of outcomes. The critiques cited speak of the
perception that the state, and to some extent the organisers, instrumentalised the
Parade while the supposed LGBT beneficiaries gained little. The organisers, while
not necessarily government-organised NGOs, were widely seen as acting as such.
Owing significantly to the militarised and depoliticised nature of the state’s
involvement, the Parade materially actualised and reified rather than transcended the
enduring polarisation of Serbian society. As a blueprint for future citizenship, it
included some (insincerely, insofar as the state is concerned), but excluded many—
by constructing them not as political subjects to be talked to (however difficult that
seems), but as a manipulated mob to be repressed. The slogan of a campaign against
violence initiated in the wake of the Parade illustrates this wish to exclude from the
national community: “Show him that he is not Serbia!”61

Toward a Populist Social Transformation?

Some voices in Serbia interpret the violent protests in relation to the social mar-
ginalisation of perpetrators and point to exclusionism inherent to liberal and human
rights projects. Thus, Sonja Avlijaš speaks of the opponents’ “disempowerment” and
“structural violence” against them in the context of growing social inequality.62
Dušan Maljković warns that “hooliganisation” and “racist essentialisation” of the

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

846  East European Politics and Societies

protesters can lead to their “dehumanisation.”63 The implied solution to endemic

homophobia is a construction of an egalitarian welfare society. As much as I appre-
ciate these valuable analyses and visions, I contend that they overemphasise the
class aspect of homophobia at the expense of the wider politics of citizenship which
inform it. Gender, ethnonationalist, collectivist and class-based facets of the resis-
tance to LGBT rights (or more broadly, liberal democracy) in Serbia constitute an
integrated ideological system and they must be all addressed in social theory and
practice. What is needed is a grassroots, “populist” social transformation.
While I found civil society discourses on Europe pacing in that direction, in the
field of LGBT rights first signs of such approach came from somewhat unexpected
quarters. A day after the Parade, Jelena Karleuša, a pop-singer whose music and
private relationships link her to the “First Serbia,”64 published a column in the high-
circulation tabloid Kurir which triggered and mainstreamed a lively, if short-lived
public debate.65 Rhetorically a persuasive, in-your-face dialogue with homophobes,
it is written in colloquial, abrasive Serbian. Constructing the anti-Parade violence as
a national disgrace, it asks: “How long will the scum remain loud and clear, and we
a mute people (narod)?” In a frontal attack, Karleuša links homophobia to patriar-
chy, sexism and ethnonationalism in Serbia, and points out the homoerotic under-
tones of such mainstream phenomena as football or Serbian straight male look.
Heightening the controversy, she reminds us that she is married to a football player,
and gives us insight into his homophobic views. Unlike other advocates of LGBT
rights in Serbia, she deals with the awkward but all the more central subject of the
perceived repugnancy of gay male anal sex.66 Conspicuously, her text contains no
references to Europe. It speaks to domestic audience, and its message is simple:
“We, as a nation, need to change.” Karleuša later reiterated her views in the influen-
tial B92 talk-show The Week’s Impression.
The reactions of civil society circles with whom I discussed her were divided. In
the logic of “two Serbias” and Bourdieuan game of “distinction,” many expressed
horror over Karleuša’s vulgar style and disappointment that she, rather than all the
respectable artists and intellectuals speaking in favour of LGBT rights, elicited such
a strong reaction. Others were amused and appreciative. Most recognized the politi-
cal importance of Karleuša’s contribution. Indeed, owing precisely to who she is and
how she communicated the issue, Karleuša took a step toward opening up a “popu-
list” discursive space where a straightforward, mutually intelligible exchange
between the proponents of the two analysed citizenship politics is possible. It is a
space of cultural intimacy,67 owned and inclusive of all, perhaps even luring them in
by the bad manners and celebrity halo with which the issues are being served.
In this article, I did not wish to assert that the Pride Parade or legal and formal-
institutional reforms demanded by the EU cannot or did not contribute to
democratisation in Serbia or elsewhere. The analysed policies may play a positive
role and their long-term outcomes are yet to be seen; if I have privileged a
critical perspective, it is because I believe they need a candid feedback. Without

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  847

incorporating an empirical and interpretative understanding of the implementation

outcomes in their sociopolitical setting, these policies might fail on their promise
and only transfer Serbia from the EU’s “immediate outside”68 to its internal
periphery—to a colonial-like condition of pockets of liberty and progress enclosed
and threatened by an inert, oppressive society, in turn dominated by a formally inte-
grated and Europeanised state.

Notes
1. See A. Sharma and A. Gupta, “Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of
Globalization,” in The Anthropology of the State, ed. A. Sharma and A. Gupta, 1–42 (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 2006).
2. See T. Blom Hansen and F. Stepputat, “Introduction: States of Imagination,” in States of
Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, ed. T. Blom Hansen and F. Stepputat,
1–38 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), at 7.
3. “Država najavila odgovor na nasilje,” B92, 10 October 2010, http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.
php?dd=10&mm=10&nav_category=11&nav_id=464334&yyyy=2010 (accessed 10 October 2010). This
and all other translations from Serbian are mine.
4. “Država najavila odgovor na nasilje,” B92, 10 October 2010.
5. At the time of writing, Ivica Dačić is also the President of the Socialist Party of Serbia. An impor-
tant figure of the Milošević regime, he served as the spokesperson of the Socialist Party in 1992–2000
and held other party functions.
6. “Ivica Dačić: Nisam ja odlučio da bude Parada ponosa, vi ste to birali 5. oktobra,” SEEbiz, 12 October
2010, http://www.seebiz.eu/sr/politika/ivica-dacic-nisam-ja-odlucio-dabude-parada-ponosa%2c-vi-ste-to-
birali-5.-oktobra,94832.html (accessed 12 October 2010).
7. See C. Shore and S. Wright, “Policy: A New Field of Anthropology,” in Anthropology of Policy:
Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, ed. C. Shore and S. Wright, 3–33 (London: Routledge,
1997).
8. See J. Greenberg, “Citizen Youth: Student Organizations and the Making of Democracy in
Postsocialist Serbia” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2007), at 24–25.
9. See J. R. Wedel, C. Shore, G. Feldman and S. Lathrop, “Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy,”
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 600 (2005): 30–51, at 40–41.
10. N. Lendvai, “Europeanization of Social Policy? Prospects and Challenges for South East Europe,”
in Social Policy and International Interventions in South East Europe, ed. B. Deacon and P. Stubbs,
22–44 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), at 26. Also see I. Bellier and T. M. Wilson, An Anthropology
of the European Union: Building, Imagining and Experiencing the New Europe (Oxford, UK: Berg,
2000).
11. “About the Project,” Speak European, n.d., http://www.govev.rs/index.php?action=about-the-
project (accessed 22 April 2011).
12. “Boris Tadić: Hajde da osvojimo Evropu 3. februara!,” Demokratska stranka, 22 January 2008, http://
www.ds.org.rs/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3928:------3-&catid=16&Itemid=431
(accessed 25 April 2011).
13. “EU nema alternativu, pre svega zbog visokog standarda života,” Demokratska stranka, 1 March
2011, http://www.ds.org.rs/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11075&Itemid=424 (accessed
25 April 2011).
14. See Z. Golubović, I. Spasić, and Đ. Pavićević, eds., Politika i svakodnevni život: Srbija 1999–2002
(Belgrade: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, 2003), at 305; M. Mitrović, “Serbia—from Miki and
Kupinovo to Europe: Public Performance and the Social Role of Celebrity,” Glasnik Etnografskog insti-
tuta SANU 56, no. 1 (2008): 117–31; M. Mitrović, “‘New Face of Serbia’ at the Eurovision Song Contest:

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

848  East European Politics and Societies

International Media Spectacle and National Identity,” European Review of History—Revue européenne
d’histoire 17, no. 2 (2010): 171–85; but cf. Z. Volčič, “The Notion of ‘the West’ in the Serbian National
Imaginary,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 8, no. 2 (2005): 155–75.
15. D. Kostovicova, “Post-socialist Identity, Territoriality and European Integration: Serbia’s Return
to Europe after Milošević,” GeoJournal 61 (2004): 23–30.
16. See J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1975).
17. Greenberg, “Citizen Youth,” 99.
18. Such understanding is employed, but also consciously made explicit, by Z. Milivojević, Civil
Society in Serbia: Suppressed during the 1990s—Gaining Legitimacy and Recognition after 2000,
CIVICUS Civil Society Index Report for Serbia (Belgrade: Argument, 2006), at 10.
19. See D. Kostovicova, “Civil Society and Post-communist Democratization: Facing a Double
Challenge in Post-Milošević Serbia,” Journal of Civil Society 2, no. 1 (2006): 21–37.
20. See F. Bieber, “The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in
Serbia,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 17, no. 7 (2003): 73–90.
21. For anthropological conceptualisations of civil society, see C. Hann and E. Dunn, eds., Civil
Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996); J. L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, eds.,
Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999); C. Hann, “Is Balkan Civil Society an Oxymoron? From Konigsberg to Sarajevo,
via Premyśl,” Ethnologia Balkanica 7 (2003): 63–78.
22. See G. Eyal, “Anti-politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech
Transition to Capitalism,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 49–92; M. Kaldor, “The Idea of Global
Civil Society,” International Affairs 79, no. 3 (2003): 583–93.
23. S. Naumović, “The Ethnology of Transformation as Transformed Ethnology: The Serbian Case,”
Ethnologia Balkanica 6 (2002): 7–37; F. Bieber, “The Other Civil Society in Serbia: Non-governmental
Nationalism—The Case of the Serbian Resistance Movement,” in Uncivil Society? Contentious Politics
in Post-Communist Europe, ed. P. Kopecký and C. Mudde, 19–36 (London: Routledge, 2003), at 19.
24. “Balkanism” is a discourse similar to Orientalism which locates the Balkans to the periphery of
the symbolic geography of Europe and the bottom of its civilizational hierarchy, but is also often mobi-
lised to establish such hierarchies between and within Balkan countries, nations and social categories. See
M. Bakić-Hayden and R. M. Hayden, “Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic
Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics,” Slavic Review 51, no. 1 (1992): 1–15; M. Bakić-
Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995): 917–31;
M. Živković, “Serbian Stories of Identity and Destiny in the 1980s and 1990s: Volume One” (PhD diss.,
University of Chicago, 2001).
25. See S. Jansen, “The Streets of Beograd. Urban Space and Protest Identities in Serbia,” Political
Geography 20 (2001): 35–55; S. Jansen, “Who’s Afraid of White Socks? Towards a Critical Understanding
of Post-Yugoslav Urban Self-perceptions,” Ethnologia Balkanica 9 (2005): 151–67; J. Greenberg,
“‘Goodbye Serbian Kennedy:’ Zoran Đinđić and the New Democratic Masculinity in Serbia,” East
European Politics and Societies 20, no. 1 (2006): 126–51.
26. I. Spasić, “ASFALT: The Construction of Urbanity in Everyday Discourse in Serbia,” Ethnologia
Balkanica 10 (2006): 211–27, at 222–23.
27. See I. Čolović, “Kultura i politika u Srbiji,” in Srbija je važna: Unutrašnje reforme i evropske
integracije, ed. V. Petrič, G. Svilanović and K. Solioz, 141–48 (Belgrade: RDP B92—“Samizdat B92”,
2009), at 146–47; Helšinski odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, Godišnji izveštaj: Srbija 2009. Evropeizacija—
dometi i ograničenja (Belgrade: Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, 2009), at 317–26.
28. S. Antonić, “Misionarska inteligencija u današnjoj Srbiji,” in Intelektualci u tranziciji, ed. J. Trkulja,
225–35 (Zrenjanin: Skupština opštine and Narodna biblioteka “Jovan Popović,” 2003) (accessed 20 April
2011 at http://starisajt.nspm.rs/Komentari/komentarilantmisionarskantelig.htm).
29. A. Dunđerin, “Ombudsmanov govor mržnje: Invalid(i) uma,” Pečat, 1 August 2010, http://www
.pecat.co.rs/2010/08/ombusdmanov-govor-mrznje-invalidi-uma/ (accessed 30 April 2011).

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  849

30. S. Antonić, “Pad sajta i reakcije,” Politika, 29 January 2009, http://www.politika.rs/pogledi/

Slobodan-Antonic/PAD-SAJTA-I-REAKCIJE.lt.html (accessed 30 April 2011).
31. The interviewees were asked some or all of the following questions in Serbian: “Is it possible to
believe that ‘Europe has an alternative’ for Serbia?” “Is there something like ‘European values’ (variation:
‘values of the EU’) and if there is, what is it?” “What do you think of the way that the European integra-
tion of Serbia is going?”
32. Greenberg, “Citizen Youth,” 89–97. Also see A. Gilbert, J. Greenberg, E. Helms, and S. Jansen,
“Reconsidering Postsocialism from the Margins of Europe: Hope, Time and Normalcy in Post-Yugoslav
Societies,” Anthropology News, November (2008): 10–11.
33. M. van de Port, Gypsies, Wars & Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in
a Serbian Town (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), at 75.
34. See M. Doornbos, “Good Governance: The Rise and Decline of a Policy Metaphor?,” Journal of
Development Studies 37, no. 6 (2001): 93–108.
35. See I. Spasić, “Politika i svakodnevni život u Srbiji 2005: Odnos prema političkoj sferi, promena
društvenog poretka, javnost,” Filozofija i društvo 27 (2005): 45–74, at 48–49.
36. See also Golubović et al., “Politika i svakodnevni život,” 304.
37. Greenberg, “Citizen Youth,” 99.
38. J. Paley, “Introduction,” in Democracy: Anthropological Approaches, ed. J. Paley, 3–20 (Santa Fe:
School for Advanced Research Press, 2008), at 5.
39. There have been two published initiatives, in 2004 and 2009, to organise a Parade since the first
attempt in 2001, but both were called off for security reasons. For a historical outline, see Gay Straight
Alliance (GSA), Prejudices Exposed: Homophobia in Serbia 2010 (Belgrade: Gay Straight Alliance,
2010), at 44–55.
40. European Commission, Serbia 2009 Progress Report (Brussels: Commission of the European
Communities, 2009), at 15.
41. European Commission, Serbia 2010 Progress Report (Brussels: European Commission, 2010), at 13.
42. European Parliament resolution of 19 January 2011 on the European integration process of
Serbia, P7_TA-PROV(2011)0014, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//
TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2011-0014+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN (accessed 20 April 2011).
43. Apart from representatives of these, I interviewed a person close to an institution that deals with the
relationships between the EU and the government and three LGBT activists—one primarily associated with
lesbian activism and involved in the organization of the 2009 Parade, and two not involved either in 2009
or 2010—a leader of an LGBT NGO in a smaller Serbian town and an academic. My intention was obvi-
ously not to investigate perceptions or interests of the “LGBT community” as a whole but rather to identify
and interpret diverging politics of LGBT rights in Serbia in relation to the Parade.
44. The Democratic Party of Serbia, New Serbia, and United Serbia refused the meeting.
45. These were the Ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs, Human and Minority Rights, Youth and
Sport, Culture, and Health; the government’s EU Integration Office; the President of the Parliament; the
Parliament’s Defence and Security Committee; and President Tadić who also presides the National
Security Council.
46. The body consisted of representatives of the Ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs, and Human and
Minority Rights, the Republic Public Prosecution Office, the Ombudsman Office, the Belgrade City
Government, and the Parliament’s Defence and Security Committee.
47. “Protiv evropske parade srama—Beograd 10. oktobar 2010.mp4,” YouTube, 19 October 2010,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8tiOeFcuaQ (accessed 14 April 2011).
48. “Tribina u Novoj Pazovi,” SNP Naši 1389, 29 April 2011, http://snp1389.rs/index.php?option=com
_content&view=article&id=497%3At---&catid=36%3Avesti (accessed 1 May, 2011).
49. “Povodom sramne presude pripadnicima pokreta ‘Obraz,’” Stop diskriminaciji!, 21 April 2011,
http://www.stopdiskriminaciji.org/arhiva/povodom-sramne-presude-pripadnicimapokreta-
%E2%80%9Eobraz%E2%80%9C (accessed 22 April 2011).

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

850  East European Politics and Societies

50. Maja (a pseudonym) is close to an institution that deals with relationships between the EU and the
government. She wished to remain anonymous.
51. “Prva presuda za nerede na gej paradi,” Vesti online, 12 November 2010, http://www.naslovi.
net/2010-11-12/vesti-online/prva-presuda-za-nerede-na-gej-paradi/2112683 (accessed 1 May 2011).
52. “Vođi ‘Obraza’ dve godine zatvora,” Tanjug, 20 April 2011, http://www.tanjug.rs/vest.asp?id=11886
(accessed 20 April 2011).
53. “Huligani napali sedište DS u Krunskoj,” Smedia, 10 October 2010, http://www.smedia.rs/vesti/vest/
46342/Huligani-Parada-ponosasediste-DS-Krunska-ulica-Beograd-napad-napali-sediste-DS-u-Krunskoj
.html (accessed 10 October 2010).
54. See J. Greenberg, “Nationalism, Masculinity and Multicultural Citizenship in Serbia,” Nationalities
Papers 34, no. 3 (2006): 321–41; Greenberg, “Citizen Youth,” at 356–69; J. Vasiljević, “Citizenship in
Serbia: In the Crossfire of Changing Nationhood Narratives,” CITSEE Working Paper 17 (Edinburgh:
The University of Edinburgh, 2011).
55. “Porodičnom šetnjom protiv Parade ponosa,” Press Online, 8 October 2010, http://www.presson
line.rs/sr/vesti/vesti_dana/story/136016/Porodi%C4%8Dnom+%C5%A1etnjom+protiv+Parade+ponosa
.html (accessed 9 October 2010).
56. Written by “novosađanin,” B92, 10 October 2010, http://www.b92.net/info/komentari.php?nav
_id=464334#k4469922 (accessed 11 October 2010).
57. Milićević resigned on his function of the President of GSA in April 2010. In turn, Lazar Pavlović
was elected President.
58. See W. F. Fisher, “Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices,” Annual Review
of Anthropology 26 (1997): 439–64; P. P. Houtzager, “Introduction: From Polycentrism to the Polity,” in
Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion, ed. P. P. Houtzager and
M. Moore, 1–31 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
59. See S. Sampson, “Too Much Civil Society? Donor-driven NGOs in the Balkans,” in Revisiting the
Role of Civil Society in the Promotion of Human Rights, ed. L. Dhundale and E. A. Andersen, 197–220
(Copenhagen: Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2004).
60. See J.-P. Olivier de Sardan, Anthropology and Development: Understanding Contemporary Social
Change (London: Zed Books, 2005); D. Mosse and D. Lewis, “Theoretical Approaches to Brokerage and
Translation in Development,” in Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and
Agencies, ed. D. Lewis and D. Mosse, 1–26 (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2006). On the agency of civil
society elites in the Balkans, see S. Sampson, “The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to
Albania,” in Civil Society: Challenging Western Models, ed. C. Hann and E. Dunn, 119–40 (London:
Routledge, 1996); S. Sampson, “Beyond Transition: Rethinking Elite Configurations in the Balkans,” in
Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia, ed. C. Hann, 297–316 (London: Routledge,
2002); Sampson, “Too Much Civil Society?”
61. “Kampanja protiv nasilja,” Facebook, n.d., http://www.facebook.com/pages/Necu-da-mrzim/
134082883310595#!/note.php?note_id=163988266958931 (accessed 3 May 2011).
62. S. Avlijaš, “Proud of Nothing,” Sonja Avlijas: On the Two Worlds I Share, 12 October 2010, http://
sonjaavlijas.blogspot.com/2010/10/proud-of-nothing.html (accessed 24 November 2010).
63. D. Maljković, “Gej Prajd 2010: Od politike identiteta do huliganizacije,” Novi Plamen: Časopis
demokratske ljevice za politička, društvena i kulturna pitanja 5, no. 15 (2011): 39–42.
64. Her music, at least in the early phase of her career, is considered “turbo-folk,” and her image is
appropriately hyperfeminine and sexualised—all emblematic of the “First Serbia.” Her first brief marriage
was to the son of Bogoljub Karić, tycoon associated with the Milošević regime (in 1998–99, he served as
a minister). She repeatedly spoke in favour of LGBT rights in the past. For links of the “First Serbia” with
musical aesthetics, see E. D. Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of
Alternatives (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), at 144; Greenberg, “‘Goodbye
Serbian Kennedy,’” at 135–37.

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015

 Mikuš / Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”  851

65. J. Karleuša, “Otvorite svoj um!,” 11 October 2010, http://www.kurir-info.rs/kolumna/otvorite-

svoj-um-54050.php (accessed 11 October 2010).
66. Thanks to Dušan Maljković for making me aware of this.
67. See M. Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State, 2nd edition (London:
Routledge, 2005).
68. S. Jansen, “After the Red Passport: Towards an Anthropology of the Everyday Geopolitics of
Entrapment in the EU’s ‘Immediate Outside,’” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009):
815–32.

Marek Mikuš is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the London School of Economics, currently com-
pleting fieldwork for his dissertation entitled Rerunning the Transition: Democratisation, Civil-society
Building and Europeanisation in Serbia. He has received an MA in Ethnology from the Charles
University, Prague (2007) and an MSc in Anthropology and Development from the LSE (2009).

Downloaded from eep.sagepub.com at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 18, 2015