The Scent of Ajvar and the Scent of Lavender: Limitations and the Freedom of/from Ethnic Identification for Serbia’s Youth
Author(s) Ana Đorđević Publisher Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade Akademska knjiga, Novi Sad Published 2022 ISBN 978-86-82324-17-1 Pages 221 Edition Special edition
The Scent of Ajvar and the Scent of Lavender is a cultural-psychological study that looks at how young people in Serbia, born in the 1990s, understand, perceive, and envision their ethnic belonging, as well as the practices of their ethnic socialization. The particularity of this generation is that it has no personal memories of the period before the Yugoslav wars and dissolution of the country, events which, driven by nationalist ideology, shaped their early childhood and understanding of ethnicity and nationality. The book is critical in nature, basing its criticism of ethnonationalist identifications not only on socio-theoretical and political ground, but reveals it in quotidian experiences of autonomy and resistance among young people.