Introduction

The departure point for this book was my bewilderment about extreme nationalism among a large part of the academic community in Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars in 1990s. This chapter provides a personal reflection on the cosmopolitan life in Yugoslavia during the 1980s and the subsequent period of the rude awakening in the early 1990s, in order to make clear my bias and my motivations for this study. It provides the context for the book that investigates the impact of nationalism and cosmopolitanism on information practices in academic communities and explores the ways in which we might study these practices.

Keywords

Nationalism; cosmopolitanism; Yugoslavia; Bosnia; scholarly communication; information practices

One of the great debates of our time is related to the question of identity in an increasingly globalised world, involving disputes between particularism of nationalism and universalism of cosmopolitanism. Some authors claim that new communication networks offer a liberatory power to escape the constraints of traditional understandings of identity as fixed and determined, and have the potential to create new post-national political forms. Others argue that the insecurity of contemporary globalisation reinforces the need for stronger national identities. Few institutions are challenged as strongly as contemporary universities by these processes. Being both 'places for teaching universal knowledge' and 'important national cultural institutions' for two centuries, they are profoundly affected by 'changes brought about by the Internet and information technology, with the issues of globalization, the welfare state, the nation state, etc.' (Kwiek, 2001, p. 29). However, the influence of these processes on scholars' information practices was not a focus of information behaviour (IB) research. This book investigates the impact of nationalism and cosmopolitanism on information sharing in academic communities, based on the fieldwork conducted at Bosnian university. As such, the book is about the influence of politics on information practices. But it is also about the ways in which we might study these practices. The book questions the major theoretical perspectives in IB research field and offers an alternative approach to trace information practices, informed by actor-network theory (ANT).

The departure point for the book was my bewilderment about extreme nationalism displayed by a large part of the academic community in Yugoslavia during the Balkan wars in 1990s. This chapter provides a personal reflection of that period in order to make clear my bias and my motivations for this study. The first section reflects on the cosmopolitan life in Yugoslavia during the early 1980s. The second section describes my perplexity about the rise of nationalism in the late 1980s and the involvement of Yugoslav scholars in the Balkan wars during the 1990s. Finally, the last section discusses the focus and structure of the book.

The bridge of civilisations

The last few decades have been marked, on one side, with the end of the Cold War, the rapid development of information technology, and a hope that these processes will lead to the creation of larger transnational communities such as the European Union (EU), and on the other side, 'regional struggles in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Ireland, the Basque region, Belgium and elsewhere indicate tendencies toward new and smaller national units' (Poster, 2006, p. 76). For some, the fall of the Berlin Wall meant 'the end of history' (Fukuyama, 1992). For others, this was merely a replacement of the iron curtain of ideology with curtains of cultures that would ultimately lead to 'the clash of civilizations' (Huntington, 1996). The events of September 11 and subsequent 'wars on terror' may have played in favour of the latter argument, but political discussions in the last few decades were dominated by both arguments. While Beck (2004) claims that these arguments are simply two faces of western universalism (one focusing on the sameness, the other emphasising otherness), they are commonly distinguished as universalist and particularist arguments.

For those of us in Yugoslavia, this debate started in 1980s in the background of emerging problems that would gradually lead to the Balkan wars in 1990s. The death of Tito (a leading unification figure), the first protests in Kosovo, and later economic crises have all challenged a Yugoslav version of 'unity in diversity' and 'socialism with the human face'. While those with universalist arguments, similarly to Fukuyama (1992), claimed that only liberal democracy and a free market would solve Yugoslav problems, those with the particularist arguments claimed that 'the clash of civilisations' was inevitable, as they challenged Yugoslavia as an 'artificial creation'. But all these challenges were still in the background. In the foreground, Yugoslavia seemed to be in a 'never better shape' for the larger part of 1980s. We hosted the Olympic Games in Sarajevo in 1984, and the 1980s were seen as the 'golden age' of specific Yugoslav rock'n'roll. While we were aware of those background problems and the fragility of this 'artificial beauty', my generation was focusing on the foreground. We were having the time of our lives. We were fully conscious that we were the 'lucky generation' being in right place at the right time. For us, 'for this specific last Yugoslav generation, the 1980s were a period of freedom, of a "liberal" form of socialism, of a position between the East and the West' (Volcic, 2009, p. 12).

The position between the East and the West was probably the most important pillar of Yugoslav identity: not only that Yugoslavia did not take a side in the Cold War, but as a leader and a founder of Non-Aligned Movement, it was very active in building the peace between the two sides. Such a position was at the same time an identity marker (nor East nor West) that differentiated us from both sides, and a universalist position (both East and West). Yugoslav culture was acclaimed in European circles, and large international movie, theatre and music festivals were held in Yugoslavia. This trend of openness and identification with a European cosmopolitanism 'was re-enforced by rising living standards, unrestricted freedom to travel and armies of western tourists frequenting the Adriatic cost' (Draskovic, 2010, p. 80). At the same time, Yugoslav culture was also very popular in Eastern Europe, the USSR and China. The movie about socialist revolution and antifascist struggle Walter Defends Sarajevo was probably the most popular movie in China ever (Levi, 2007).

The position between the East and the West was particularly strong in Bosnia. We were never tired of explaining this unity of diversity and showing how only in Bosnia can you find Orthodox and Catholic churches, Jewish synagogues and Muslim mosques leaning on each other, and standing in beautiful harmony for centuries. Bosnia was a place, unlike any other in Europe, in which the great religions and great powers combined: 'the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, and the faiths of Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam' (Malcolm, 2002, p. xix). We have seen Bosnia as a 'bridge of civilisation', and this view had been strengthened by identity markers of the last Yugoslav generation, such as liberal form of socialism, unity in diversity, specific brand of rock culture and free education (Volcic, 2007).

The turning point in the liberalisation of Yugoslav socialism was the fall of the conservative fraction of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in the early 1960s. Soon after that Yugoslavia 'became the poster child of socialism' (Draskovic, 2010, p. 84). Yugoslavia gained considerable financial help from the West, and its corporations became competitive by western standards. The last travel restrictions had been lifted and open borders brought tourists from western countries, which resulted in rising income and living standards. There were few restrictions on intellectual freedom besides those directly related to the principles of the Yugoslav socialist system and the role of Yugoslav leadership. As a result, there were a number of papers, magazines, books, films, and television programmes which could not be distinguished from those in western countries (Pervan, 1978, p. 164).

Only a few years later, two movements even challenged the system and the leadership. The Praxis School was a Marxist movement that based its philosophy on the writing of young Marx and existentialist philosophy. Two basic activities of the movement were journal Praxis that was regularly published between 1965 and 1973, and running the Korcula Summer School, an annual symposium that was a meeting place for established philosophers and social critics including Erich Fromm, Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Ernest Bloch, Eugen Fink, Henri Lefebvre and Richard Bernstein. With this mix of existentialist and Marxist philosophy, the Praxis school was a major actor in the liberalisation of Yugoslav socialism.

The second movement was the student movement of 1968, which was almost a mirror of other students' movement in the world in 1968. The important difference was that the Yugoslav student movement had no ambitions to change the system, but it rather urged implementations of the...