Religion in the Yugoslav conflicts: post-war perspectives

Abstract

The wars that dissolved Yugoslavia – were they religious wars? Why are conflicts increasingly coded as religious, rather than as, for example, social or ethnic? What constitutes a ‘religious’ or ‘holy’ war. This article attempts an inventory of important cat­egories and hypotheses generated in the relevant literature so far, with a few critical notes along the way. The author considers the role assigned to religion in structural, cultural, and actor-oriented explanations of the Yugoslav wars. Structural and cultural explanations downplay the role of human agency and, hence, of moral responsibility; actor-oriented approaches focus on it.