This article examines scholarly discourse on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. It focuses on relativistic arguments put forward by anthropologists and shows how such accounts mask and elide central historical realities of the conflict. Relativistic accounts of serious modern conflicts often mirror and offer legitimation to the accounts put forth by perpetrators. In this case, several leading accounts of the wars in the former Yugoslavia display a strong affinity to those asserted by Serbian nationalists. The article addresses the issue of ethics and intellectual responsibility in anthropological fieldwork in situations of conflict and the problem of the political uses of anthropological research.
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