Workers' self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. Goran Musić has investigated the changing ways in which blue-collar workers perceived the recurring crises of the regime. Two self-managed metal enterprises, one in Serbia another in Slovenia, provide the frame of the analysis in the time span between 1945 and 1989. These two factories became famous for strikes in 1988 that evoked echoes in popular discourses in former Yugoslavia. Drawing on interviews, factory publications and other media, local archives, and secondary literature, Musić analyzes the two cases, going beyond the clichés of political manipulation from the top and workers' intrinsic attraction to nationalism. The author explains how, in the later phase of communist Yugoslavia, growing social inequalities among the workers and undemocratic practices inside the self-managed enterprises facilitated the spread of a nationalist and pro-market ideology on the shop floors. Yet rather than being a mass taken advantage of by populist leaders, the working class Musić presents is one with agency and voice, a force that played an important role in shaping the fate of the country. The book thus seeks to open a debate on the social processes leading up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Argues that the Balkans are on the cusp of a historic socio-political transformation rather than renewed ethnic strife

Discusses Serbia's struggle for democratic values after the fall of the Milošević regime provoked by the NATO war, and after the trauma caused by the secession of Kosovo. Are the value systems of the post-Milošević era true stumbling blocks of a delayed transition of this country? Seventeen contributors from Norway, Serbia, Italy, Germany, Poland and some other European countries covered a broad range of topics in order to provide answers to this question. The subjects of their investigations were national myths and symbols, history textbooks, media, film, religion, inter-ethnic dialogue, transitional justice, political party agendas and other related themes. The authors of the essays represent different scholarly disciplines whose theoretical conceptions and frameworks are employed in order to analyze two alternative value systems in Serbia: liberal, cosmopolitan and civic on the one hand, and traditional, provincial, nationalist on the other.

New Media, Old Regimes: Case Studies in Comparative Communication Law and Policy, by Lyombe S. Eko, is a collection of novel theoretical perspectives and case studies in comparative communication law. Through these cases, Eko describes, explains and illustrates how a number of nation-states, transnational, and international organizations employ culture-specific "distillations" of universal principles to resolve tensions between freedom of expression and other societal interests in real space and cyberspace. This study provides essential scholarship on comparative communication law and policy.