Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies

Cultural Identity Politics in the (Post-)Transitional Societies
language policy and post-Yugoslav political and cultural configurations in Slovenia”.
Petković examined how the language situation of other nations of the former Yugoslavia
in Slovenia changed with the independence of Slovenia, how it affected specific post-
Yugoslav re-construction and re-positioning of cultural identities, and how it was/
is supported by the media system in Slovenia. Next, Paško Bilić from the Institute for
International Relations gave a presentation on “How social media enforce glocalization
– the processes of identity change in selected Central and Southeast European countries”.
The main focus of this paper was on the processes of cultural change and how they are
enforced through the use of social media and seen from the global perspective. By using
theoretical arguments and statistical data Bilić focused on the question of redefining
cultural identities through social media, with the examples of Facebook and Wikipedia,
while taking into account the regional context. This line of discussion was continued by
the guest speaker Vladimir Davčev from the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius
in Skopje, Macedonia, in his presentation “How modern technology shape-shifts our
identity”. Davčev highlighted the infinite possibilities that the anonymity of cyberspace
brings for the emergence of identities that can be constructed in online communication.
What needs to be remembered is that these online characters are expressions of realworld
experiences, ideas and so forth. The interconnectedness of the offline and online
world is thus stressed in the conclusion of the presentation.
In the discussion that followed the participants of the conference asked presenters on
the panel for a more regional based approach to the issues relating to the influence of the
new technologies on identification processes in the final version of their papers.
The fifth panel “Post-transitional perspectives: cultural identities and cultural
education” was chaired by Milena Dragićević Šešić. The first speaker was Svetlana
Jovičić from the University of Arts in Belgrade and she spoke on the “Re-shaping of
identities through youth/children cultural education policies” where she focused on
the cultural and educational context of identification processes. In her presentation she
also reviewed selected cultural practices relating to children that dealt mainly with the
Serbian context, but with references to some other countries as well. The presentation
that followed by Nada Švob-Đokić entitled “Cultural identities in Southeastern Europe:
a post-transitional perspective” concentrated on the structural elements of cultural
space (‘institutional’ culture, ‘independent’ culture and ‘market oriented’ culture) that
illustrate ongoing cultural changes. Švob-Đokić showed that such changes occur through
the influences that spread from European cultures and global cultural trends that are
ever more present due to the influence of new technologies, cultural industries and the
mediatization of culture. In the next presentation “Repetition of difference – search
for unstable identity” guest speaker Svetlana Racanović, an independent curator from
Montenegro, noted how the shift to the post-transitional situation is a process marked
by many ambiguities that result in an unstable identity. She opened a discussion where
many issues related to the post-transitional situation were raised, from the development
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