Paper short abstract:

Liberal and nationalist NGOs in Serbia are two scenes of associational life emergent in a relationship of mutual constitution with the 'ever-transitional' state. Their 'fantasies of the state and society' articulate social antagonism about the essential meanings of a democratic polity.

Paper long abstract:

Liberal Western-supported NGOs seemed to be the victors of the 2000 regime change in Serbia and the last decade of (unsteady) 'democratisation' and 'Europeanisation.' This self-professed 'Other Serbia' of urban middle class and intellectuals has been locally equated with 'civil society.' However, in the general discontent of ever-transitional Serbia, nationalist groups seem competent to mobilise popular support and influence formal politics. The literature has labeled such groups as 'uncivil society,' but interestingly, they adopt many NGO practices. They present themselves and sometimes act as populist and revolutionary national fronts opposed to the state, but most of them have university-educated middle class leaders and strive to participate in state-sanctioned institutional politics. Drawing on sixteen months of fieldwork in Belgrade and other sites, I propose to address these apparent paradoxes by conceptualising 'civil' and 'uncivil' societies as structurally similar but ideologically different kinds of the plurality of 'civil societies.' I define civil societies as scenes of associational life, i.e. types and social complexes of associations as classified by actors themselves, which emerge in a relationship of mutual constitution with the state and which generate divergent 'fantasies of the state' and 'fantasies of society.' I will show that the ideas of tolerance and civility are variously developed in the two civil societies rather than fully present in one and absent in the other, but more importantly that different key themes inform their fantasies of the state and society. 'Civil' and 'uncivil' society thus channel and serve as a model for social antagonism in post-conflict Serbia about the polity's essential meanings while reproducing a 'messy' democracy.