1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910369919503321

Autore

Ejdus Filip

Titolo

Crisis and Ontological Insecurity : Serbia’s Anxiety over Kosovo's Secession / / by Filip Ejdus

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

3-030-20667-X

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XIV, 202 p. 1 illus.)

Collana

Central and Eastern European Perspectives on International Relations

Disciplina

320.947

327.17094971

Soggetti

Russia—Politics and government

International relations

Russia—History

Europe, Eastern—History

Security, International

Comparative politics

Russian and Post-Soviet Politics

Foreign Policy

Russian, Soviet, and East European History

International Security Studies

Comparative Politics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction -- 2. Crisis, Anxiety and Ontological Insecurity -- 3. The Construction of Kosovo as Serbia’s Ontic Space -- 4. Disintegration of Yugoslavia and Serbia’s Anxiety over Kosovo -- 5. Critical Situation: Kosovo’s Declaration of Independence -- 6. Dissonance and Avoidance: Serbia’s Quest for a New Normal -- 7. Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This book develops a novel way of thinking about crises in world politics. By building on ontological security theory, this work conceptualises critical situations as radical disjunctions that challenge the ability of collective agents to ‘go on’. These ontological crises bring into the realm of discursive consciousness four fundamental questions



related to existence, finitude, relations and autobiography. In times of crisis, collective agents such as states are particularly attached to their ontic spaces, or spatial extensions of the self that cause collective identities to appear more firm and continuous. These theoretical arguments are illustrated in a case study looking at Serbia’s anxiety over the secession of Kosovo. The author argues that Serbia’s seemingly irrational and self-harming policy vis-à-vis Kosovo can be understood as a form of ontological self-help. It is a rational pursuit of biographical continuity and a healthy sense of self in the face of an ontological crisis triggered by the secession of a province that has been constructed as the ontic space of the Serbian nation since the late 19th century. Filip Ejdus is Associate Professor of Security Studies in the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade, Serbia.