Social distance and attitudes towards ethnically mixed marriages

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a survey that was designed to examine ethnic distance of some Belgrade's graduating students towards seven nations from ex-Yugoslavia. The research has been carried out by social distance scale, which makes possible to investigate the readiness for establishing the relationships of various degrees of closeness relative to different religion or nation with special attention to ethnic marriages. It is necessary to emphasize that the phenomenon of heterogeneous marriages has definitely been of exceptional significance for every society because, by living together and accepting elements from another culture, links are created between different groups and nations. It has been shown that ethnic distance is decreasing 11 years after the war if we compare it with the results obtained during the war, although the level of acceptance and confidence that existed before the war was not surveyed. According to obtained results we can expect that by deliberation of mass-media and complete normalization of the economic and cultural relations among the new established states in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, in the future new ethnically mixed marriages in this region will be established. It should be pointed out that those results have a great political importance, because one can conclude that ethnic prejudices, which have appeared during the war, are not deeply rooted.U ovom istrazivanju, skalom socijalne distance se ispituje spremnost da se uspostave razliciti odnosi sa nekim narodima iz bivse Jugoslavije. Specijalna paznja se poklanja stavovima prema etnicki mesovitim brakovima, jer tokom zajednickog zivota dolazi do prozimanja razlicitih kultura i stvaranja drugojacijeg nacionalnog identiteta od onog koji se formira kod homogenih brakova. Heterogeni brakovi uvek su predstavljali glavnu prepreku za politicku manipulaciju i vodjenje nacionalisticke politike. Treba istaci cinjenicu da se etnicka distanca u relativno kratkom posleratnom periodu znatno smanjila, ako se uporedi sa rezultatima dobivenim za vreme rata. Medjutim, ona se ni izdaleka ne priblizava rezultatima dobivenim pre rata, a koji su pokazivali veliki stepen prihvatanja dobrih medjuetnickih odnosa na citavom prostoru Jugoslavije. Rezultati istrazivanja ukazuju da danasnji beogradski gimnazijalci mogu zamisliti da ostvare ljubavnu vezu sa pripadnicima razlicite etnicke pripadnosti mnogo lakse nego da sa njima formiraju brak. Ova cinjenica je od velikog socijalnog znacaja, jer se moze zakljuciti da etnicke predrasude na ovom prostoru nisu duboko ukorenjene i da su nastale prvenstveno kao posledica ratne propagande. Moze se pretpostaviti da ce se liberalizacijom medija i normalizacijom ekonomskih i kulturnih odnosa stvoriti preduslovi za stvaranje novih etnicki heterogenih brakova.