A Review of One Chapter: An Example of Irresponsible Self-Indulgence

Sabrina P. Ramet , Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 87-87.

Cushman, in addition to writing a book about rock music in Russia, is the editor or coeditor of five books dealing with contemporary issues such as genocide, human rights, and arguments for humanitarian intervention in Iraq. Cushman is also the founder and editor-in-chief since 2001 of Journal of Human Rights. Sadkovich is the author of three books. Sadkovich's Italian Support for Croatian Separatism, 1927–1937 (New York: Garland, 1987) has established itself as a classic in the field and is widely and favorably cited. His book The U.S. Media and Yugoslavia (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998) was praised in Slavic Review(58:2[1999]: 473) as “an artfully created mosaic of U.S. media coverage of the dis-solution of Yugoslavia.” His book The Italian Navy in World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994) was praised in The Journal of Military History(58:4[1994]: 767) as an “extremely detailed, thoroughly researched, and definitive treatment of the wartime Regia Marina Italiana.” And his edited volume, Reevaluating Major Naval Combatants of World War II (New York: Greenwood, 1990), was lauded in that same journal (55:2[1991]: 269) as “a major contribution to the literature and a model of comparative history.” From Professor Hayden's polemic, one would have no idea that these two scholars are persons of such considerable achievement.

For further discussion of moral conventionalism, see L. W. Sumner , The Moral Foundation of Rights(Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1987).

Robert M. Hayden , Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 50-50.

That this viewpoint is in the spirit of Hobbes may be discerned by noting that, in On the Citizen,Hobbes writes, “The fourth opinion inimical to civil society comes from those who think that holders of sovereign power are subject to the civil laws.I have already shown at VI.14 that this is a false opinion...” ( Thomas Hobbes , On the Citizen, edited and translated by Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 134-134.)

Hayden , Blueprints, 114-114.

Ibid., 167, 179.

Robert M. Hayden , “Biased ‘Justice’: Human Rightsism and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” in Cleveland State Law Review(1999), www.zmag.org/balkanwatch/hayden_human-rightsism.htm (accessed 12 August, 2006).

Hayden , Blueprints, 8-8.

Susan L. Woodward , Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Susan L. Woodward , Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995), 205-205, as quoted in my Thinking about Yugoslavia, 87-87.

David Hackett Fischer , Historians' Fallacies: Toward Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 283-283.

Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup , The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 184-184, emphasis added.

In the Appeals Chamber: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic—Judgement(19 April, 2004), ICTY Case No.: IT-98-33-A, at www.un.org/icty/krstic/Appeal/judgment/krs-aj040419e.htm (accessed 23 September, 2006).

Ramet , Thinking, 185-185.

In his Blueprints(p. 2-2), Hayden cited a short passage from the first edition of my Balkan Babel, in which I said that Yugoslavia had always been a Tower of Babel, to suggest that I was thereby endorsing a theory of ancient ethnic hatreds. Yugoslavia was, of course, established only in 1918, not in ancient times, and the Biblical story is about the failure of cooperation, not about ancient ethnic hatreds. It would be quite understandable if a reader were to conclude that Professor Hayden is confused about both Yugoslav history and the story in Genesis.

Ramet , Thinking, 67-67.

Sabrina P. Ramet , Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002).

Sabrina P. Ramet , The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005(Bloomington, IN/Washington, D.C.: Indiana University/Wilson Center Press, 2006).

Keith Doubt devoted an entire chapter to criticizing Robert Hayden in his Sociology after Bosnia and Kosovo: Recovering Justice(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), chap. 13. If it had been my intention to marshal every weapon against Hayden in writing Thinking, then I would scarcely have omitted mention of this from my discussion of Doubt's book in chapter 6 of my Thinking.

Thomas Cushman , “Critical Theory and the War in Croatia and Bosnia,” in The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, No. 27 (Seattle: Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington, 1997). This monograph was later reissued, in an abridged form, as “Anthropology and Genocide in the Balkans: An Analysis of Conceptual Practices of Power,” Anthropological Theory 4:1(2004): 5-28. See also Thomas Cushman, “Response to Hayden and Denich,” Anthropological Theory 5:4(2005): 559-64.

Hayden may find an assessment of the institutions that can play such a role if he examines two recent volumes of mine: Sabrina P. Ramet and Davorka Matić , eds., Demokratska tranzicija u Hrvatskoj: Transformacija vrijednosti, obrazovanje, mediji(Zagreb, Croatia: Alinea, 2006); and Sabrina P. Ramet and Danica Fink-Hafner, eds., Democratic Transition in Slovenia: Value Transformation, Education, and Media(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006).

Hayden : “The usual blithe references to the superiority of post-Enlightenment European civilization avoid considering why the Enlightenment illuminated Europe so little in the first half of this century.” Blueprint, 159-159. Thus, without citing any empirical data or providing any discussion of the state of philosophy in the second half of this century, Hayden dismisses the Enlightenment as vapid.

For the latter, see his Blueprints, 159-159.