Sergej FlereUniversity of Maribor | UM · Department of Sociology
Sergej Flere
PhD
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Publications
Publications (98)
After World War II, Yugoslavia as a state was reconstituted by a small communist elite. Since this was an ideocratic rule, ideology was taken seriously by the elite and treated enthusiastically. One of the elite’s initial goals was to speedily develop Yugoslavia, so that a Western level of economic development be achieved. Economic disparities amon...
The break-up of the Yugoslav communist elite, which came about in the period 1962-1972, is considered. The break-up came about under the elite?s disappointment due to the failure to achieve economic objectives it set for itself, bringing about internal dubiety and mutual suspicion, the political system moving towards consociation also contributed t...
The main aim of the paper is to expose the counterfactual, scientifically unfounded and unscholarly statements by Mihaljević and Miljan in the paper “Was Tito’s Yugoslavia not Totalitarian?” We needed to treat the issues of (1) totalitarianism as a scholarly concept and a social construct, (2) the typological characterization of Tito’s Yugoslavia,...
The communist elite of Yugoslavia established Yugoslavia anew during World War II. A federal communist arrangement was put in place, with the period shifting from an almost totalitarian regime towards an operationally consociational one. In this paper, we question the issue of the homogeneity and very existence of the Yugoslav ruling communist elit...
This book examines the relationship between nationalism and the rise and fall of Yugoslavia under the rule of Josip Broz Tito. It deals particularly with the interactions between communist and intellectual elites. The authors analyze elites’ initial enthusiasm about the Yugoslav federation and how, with time, they found themselves unable to suppres...
It is widely accepted that Tito's Yugoslavia was institutionally founded at AVNOJ, namely the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, held on November 29, 1943 in Bosnian woods. At the assembly, a Decree concerning the federal organization was to be adopted. The Decree contained principles of Yugoslavia's fu...
The individualization of family life is one of the crucial ideas among leading theorists dealing with late modernity (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Bauman, 2000; Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). The individualization thesis was applied in a study of youth attitudes and actions relating to individualization in family life. Data were gathered through surveys on r...
The Slovene national movement of the late nineteenth century was based primarily on the myth of an eternal linguistic community, an essentialist position within historiography. The national development itself best fits into patterns described by Hroch and Gellner. Although most objective conditions for national constitution were met by 1929, it is...
The purpose of the study was to compare the predictive power of three sets of determinants in Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) on three dimensions of citizen participation. We analysed a representative sample of Slovenian Youth 2010 study (N = 1,257, Mage = 22.5 years, 48.8 % female). Results indicated that 1) CVM explained the largest amount of varia...
Democratic mass political culture is an important determinant of a functioning democracy. Especially in newly formed European democracies, citizens’ democratic political culture is a crucial contributor toward states’ democratic consolidation and toward a successful integration into the European currents. The present chapter indicates that politica...
Webrovo delo o nastanku kapitalizma sodi med klasična sociološka dela. Moderni (racionalni) kapitalizem naj bi nastal iz specifičnega nabora idej, tj. iz protestantske motivacije, ki je vodila k metodičnemu delu, varčevanju in akumulaciji gmotnega bogastva. Čeprav je bila teza deležna že mnogih preverjanj in kri-tik, je njena obravnava še vedno zan...
After the fall of communism, the ideological arena for framing constitutions was influenced by liberal democratic ideas, which fit well with the concept of state impartiality toward religion. Among the 23 European post-communist constitutions that were analyzed, five (Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Macedonia and the political entity of Republika Srpsk...
The study of nations and ethnicities has been subject to recent trends, particularly, those denying substance to ethnicity and nation, but focusing on the way ethnicity and nation are socially constructed and ‘reified’ (constructivism–reificationism). In this article, this idea is tested on the Yugoslav case, where cases of reification are said to...
Religija kao društveni fenomen pojavljuje se u svim društvenim uređenjima od postanka. Religija se pritom javlja u više dimenzija: kao doktrinalni i teorijski sustav, kao povijesno utemeljena zajednica, kao iz-
vor kolektivnog identiteta, kao duhovno utočište, kao okvir moralnog i pravnog djelovanja, kao organizirana institucija, itd. U odnosu na p...
Slovenia, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, has been historically typified by a political and cultural conflict between pro-clerical Catholic political forces and the opposite liberal camp. In the immediate post-independence period (after 1991), liberal forces succeeded in buttressing the lay public school, with no religious instruction. Late...
Religious dynamics in Europe, especially regarding religious pluralism, are largely affected by the characteristics of legal recognition of religious entities in individual countries. The implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights by the European Court of Human Rights clearly points to democratic pluralism as the essential principle...
State authorities in Croatia and Slovenia have recently indiscriminately designated Tito's Yugoslavia as totalitarian without reservations. Neither of these authorities referred to any systematic considerations of totalitarianism, nor did they analyze the manner of the alleged system's presence and its time limits. The current paper indicates that,...
Pursuing from the definition of religious as one “commanded by a deity,” the author analyzes the Bosnian 1992–1995 War fares. In the case of two of the three religious parties involved—the Islamic Community and the Serbian Orthodox Church—it is discernible that, for both the religious authorities and the flock, this was considered a religious strug...
Since attaining independence, Latin pattern (Martin, 1978) disputes and
conflicts have characterized the Slovenian political scene, particularly as
to relations between the state and religious communities. Slovenia adopted a
law on the issue only in 2006, availing itself of the law from the 1970s. The
2007 Religious Freedom Act contained many privi...
This study examines two conflicting hypotheses regarding the association between traditional religiosity and new age belief: the “worldview hypothesis” suggesting a positive association between these two sets of beliefs; and the “functional alternative hypothesis” suggesting a negative association between these two sets of beliefs. A sample of 1209...
The current study follows, on the one hand, the longitudinal and comparative Shell series of studies that began in Germany, specifically where it concerns its foci and methodology (hurrel-mann et al., 2010), and, on the other hand, the more longitudinal Slovenian studies of youth (Ule, 2001; Lavrič et al., 2011). Thus, the present study, which is l...
The paper studies the contemporary development of family patterns in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Historically, these patterns varied considerably, from the extended family (zadruga, fis) present in Orthodox and Muslim regions, to the European conjugal family as typical of Western Europe in Slovenia. Current trends indicate a prevalence...
The paper studies the contemporary development of family patterns in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Historically, these patterns varied considerably, from the extended family (zadruga, fis) present in Orthodox and Muslim regions, to the European conjugal family as typical of Western Europe in Slovenia. Current trends indicate a prevalence...
Issues concerning the position of churches (the respective traditional churches in particular) and religious groups, as McCrea notes, have become a prominent feature of “national identity” and a sensitive symbolic issue in contemporary European countries, where so much in other spheres of life has become uniform, or at least colorless. For this rea...
In 2011 the Constitutional Court of Slovenia designated the entire political order during 1945-1990, the period of Tito's Yugoslavia, as totalitarian , without limitations as to time or to substance in its qualification; according to this judgment, it also prohibited the use of Tito's name in nominating new streets in Slovenia. The Constitutional C...
Understanding patterns of political participation of ethnic minorities is crucial for their integration within postcommunist European countries most of which are ethnically complex and with histories of conflicts. Past research on the relationship between political participation and ethnicity in the democracies has given mixed results and there see...
Religious life is studied by way suggested by the rational choice theory and the religious capital theory. The basic contentions of the theory on the nature of religious life having to do with an exchange upon a religious market, by firms offering compensators and rewards, and consumers, is considered. In the empirical analysis, it was validated th...
Our study draws upon postmodernization theory to examine and compare social tolerance of Slovenes and Europeans toward nine minority groups. We analyzed 44 representative national samples in European Values Study (2008) and Slovenian Public Opinion data. In 2008 Slovenes were most intolerant toward drug addicts, heavy drinkers, and Romas, who remai...
In the recent decades protest participation has become most widely accepted and practiced form of citizen engagement in western democracies. Many researchers believe protest participation is crucial for democracy to be consolidated and effective, and previous studies have shown that protest participation is one of the main characteristics of a demo...
Inglehart’s theory of postmodernization (1997) and theory of human development (Inglehart and Welzel, 2007) predict that political cultural orientations are strongly associated with political and cognitive mobilization. It is argued that non-authoritarian (i.e. postmaterialist, libertarian, democratic) orientations are based in participatory compon...
The study analyzed whether the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the establishment of succeeding mono-national states was the expression of “longing” of mass proportions on the part of the nationalities within respective federal units. Using the data from two pan-Yugoslav surveys from the period preceding the dissolution, results were obtained that ind...
"Purpose: The purpose of this research was to compare mean levels of self-reported youth substance use measures in eight post-Yugoslav entities in an effort to test the applicability of modernization approach in predicting substance use levels at the cross-national level. Design/methodology/approach:
2,178 first- and second-year social science stud...
Gordon Allport defined intrinsic religious orientation as the polar opposite of the utilitarian and instrumental extrinsic orientation. On the other hand, Rodney Stark and associates developed a theory of religion according to which the utilitarian motive is at the very core of (any) religious motivation. A study of undergraduate students from thre...
The Serbian translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was developed and tested among a sample of 222
students attending Niš University who self-identified as Eastern Orthodox. The data supported the internal consistency, reliability,
and construct validity of this instrument, and commended it for further use in contributing t...
The present study examined the dimensions and levels of citizen participation in eight post-communist entities of former Yugoslavia, using a sample of 2,178 young adults (M age = 19.8 years, SD = 1.89). Principal component analysis yielded three distinct dimensions of citizen participation: electoral political participation, non-electoral political...
The primary purpose of Youth 2010 research was to create a comprehensive picture of the lives of youth (between 15 and 29) in Slovenia. The study represents a conceptual and methodological continuation of the tradition of youth research in Slovenia, with some refinements. Basis for a methodological approach were studies already carried out in Germa...
The present study examined several measures of political culture among 2,178 social science students (M age = 19.8 years, SD = 1.89) in eight post-Yugoslav entities. The aggregate level results indicated that socio-economically less developed environments had higher average levels of subject political culture, which is characterized by authoritaria...
Family structure types in the former Yugoslavia differed substantially as to size, pattern and family relations. In this paper, after a historical overview, the trends in basic dimensions of family life in post-Yugoslav entities is studied. The further development of a modern family structure is noted, particularly in those parts of the former Yugo...
Several measures of religious practice and religious orientation (intrinsic/extrinsic/quest) and the trait form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were employed in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural environments: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, and the USA. The results suggest that (1) the relatio...
In the text regimes of religious community registration by statutory law in European countries is reviewed. Although freedom of religion is declared as a pricniple at the European level and individual constitutional provisions, varied obstacles to registering religious communities are set. They may reflect fear of abuse of religion or the intent to...
The assumption of rationally motivated individual religious behavior was tested in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural/religious environments: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and the United States of America. In particular, an attempt was made to explain readiness to bear religious costs by the expec...
Cultural capital, originally a general sociological concept, has been transformed into a construct that is often applied in predicting scholastic attainment. Intellectual ability (IQ) has also been proven to be a strong, although basically psychological, predictor of educational attainment. However, these strands of research have hardly been contra...
The relationship between social status and religiosity could be illuminating in the explanation of religiosity. This has been suggested by numerous sociologically minded authors. Although not consistent across all national samples, findings from the current study, based on World Values Survey data (1999–2001), did indicate the predominance of a mod...
The current study investigated the possible existence of a relationship between authoritarianism and religiousness and the possible strength of this potential relationship. The study involved samples from four cultural environments known to differ substantially in terms of religious salience and content: Slovenia (predominantly Catholic), Serbia (p...
The concept of civil religion has caught major attention among scholarsstudying the junction of religion and politics (J.-J. Rousseau, E. Durkheim, R.Bellah). The notion focuses on the phenomenon of cultural contents sacralizingand ritualizing the ruling political institutions of a society, extending supportto the integration of the political and s...
In order to contribute to a growing international research programme concerned with the correlations, antecedents and consequences of individual differences in attitude toward religion, the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was translated into Slovenian. Data provided by a sample of 808 undergraduate students affiliated with the Roman C...
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain mental and psychological traits as the functional products of natural selection. Recently there has been a considerable development of such an approach also in the field of religion and religiosity. The key question that theorists try to answer is which evoutio...
Serbian Orthodoxy is studied empirically by using different measures of religiousness. After an initial placement of Serbian religiousness in the context of World Values Survey data, a sample of south Serbian university students is compared to student samples from three religions: Bosnian Muslims and Slovenian Catholics. Using World Values Survey (...
Several measures of religious practice and religious orientation (intrinsic/extrinsic/quest) and two measures of psychological well-being (positive affect and negative affect) have been employed in a cross-cultural survey of undergraduate university students from five different cultural/religious environments: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serb...
Student samples have become a widely used resource in the study of not only particular phenomena and problems within individual environments but also of their study within a cross-cultural context. A number of such studies, most often generalizing their results to the level of cultures, are illustrated in this article. In addition, the authors carr...
The relationship between intrinsic and personal extrinsic religious orientation as suggested by Gorsuch and McPherson is studied within four denominational samples of university students in four different cultural environments. Results show that intrinsic and extrinsic personal religious orientation form two separate dimensions only within the Amer...
The particular differences of Eastern Orthodoxy alleged by Tomka (2006) to demand a ``special research methodology'' are tested on a sample of the Serbian Orthodox, comparing them to Slovenian Catholics and American Protestants. The author found no important differences in the direction suggested by Tomka, with respect to the relation between tradi...
The dimensionality of religious orientation (RO), according to the Gorsuch and McPherson instrument (1989) was tested on a sample of Slovenian Catholic religious subjects (n = 297). RO – the “dominant paradigm” in the study of religious sentiment (Hill & Hood, 1999, p. 119) – was chosen since it has not been previously tested in this environment. F...
The concepts of intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religiosity, as operationalized by tested instruments (Batson & Schoenrade, 1991a6.
Batson , D. and Schoenrade , P. 1991a . Measuring religion as quest: 1. Validity concerns . Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , 30 : 416 – 429 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references, 1991...
This article was published in an Elsevier journal. The attached copy is furnished to the author for non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the author's institution, sharing with colleagues and providing to institution administration. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies...
This study represents an attempt to operationalize and validate the civil religion concept on four different national samples. The cultural heritage of these countries varies greatly, and according toSamuel Huntington's (1994)classification, they belong to three different civilizations. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to conf...
The author attempts to demonstrate that the concept of civil religion is appropriate and illuminating in comprehending the culture and society of Communist Yugoslavia (1945-1991). Though manifestly contrary to theism, numerous elements of this civil religion make it deserving of the name: it contained a tale of an alleged sacred historical past and...
English
Gender has been proven to be a substantial indicator of differences with respect to religiosity within Christianity. Females are always more frequently and intensively religious in comparison to males (Francis, 1997). The question of whether this holds for other religions remains unanswered. In this study we focus on university students in...
The relation between intrinsic and extrinsic orientations was studied in four samples of believing affiliates (Bosnian Muslims, Serbian Orthodox, Slovenian Catholics and US Protestants). By exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and by multidimensional scaling (MDS), differences in patterns of religious orientations were discerned in the vari...
POVZETEK: Pogojenost šolske uspešnosti kot dejavnika družbenega položaja je bila že
od nekdaj v središču sociološkega diskurza. Sociologija je nenehno poudarjala vlogo
družbenih in kulturnih dejavnikov v kontekstu posameznikovih učnih, poklicnih in drugih
dosežkov, čeprav so nekateri avtorji izven polja sociologije percepcijo družbenega de-
term...
Incl. tables, graphs, abstract, bib. The study examines the relationship between social inequalities (stratificational, gender and other disparities) and schooling, including academic attainment, longitudinally, in Slovenia. The issue is indicated most clearly at the tertiary education level. The basic finding is the parallel between educational ex...
The relationship between religiosity and delinquency is studied on a survey sample (1200) of Maribor university undergraduates (2003). Ensuing from the Hirschi and Stark assertion (1969) as to a lack of link between religiosity and delinquency, as well as from the transformation of religiosity during post-modernity in a relativistic direction, it w...
The relationship between religiosity and delinquency is studied on a survey sample (1200) of Maribor university undergraduates (2003). Ensuing from the Hirschi and Stark assertion (1969) as to a lack of link between religiosity and delinquency, as well as from the transformation of religiosity during post-modernity in a relativistic direction, it w...
Four religious cultural settings, a Slovenian Catholic one, a Bosnian Muslim one, a Serbian Orthodox one and an American Protestant one, are compared on the basis of a variety of measures of religiosity, resulting from a survey carried out on large student samples in 2005. Certain cultural peculiarities of the groups emerge: e.g., the particular Mu...
In this article the authors study social inequalities in Slovenian higher education, using a census of students at the University of Maribor. Using the common odds ratio test, it was found that young people whose fathers had completed higher education or levels beyond are approximately 14 times more likely to enter the higher education system than...
In this paper certain attractive explanations, present in sociological and other scholarship, on the dismemberment of Yugoslavia are considered through a review of unpublished survey and census data on the former Yugoslavia immediately preceding its break-up. Particularly one influential, but biased explanation of the dissolution of the former Yugo...
In the paper, the author deals with the relationship between gender and frequency of (ir)religiosity. Bearing in mind that the finding of more frequent religiosity of women is almost universal within Christianity, various psychological and sociological explanations are presented and dealt with. In the latter part of the paper, the author presents e...
Ideologies are a constant of human societies, though they have become more explicit in modern society. Since the eighteenth century, they have been increasingly distinguished from religious doctriines and popular religion. Ideologies make a claim to knowledge about society. This knowledge is, of course, biased and distorted in accordance with the i...
The sociology of religion existed in Yugoslavia in a modest way from the 1960s until the collapse of Yugoslavia. It evolved from an initial Marxist perspective, through humanist and structuralist positions, towards more complex models. Empirical work was centred upon religiosity of the general population, correlating findings on religiosity with ot...
Yugoslays have often boasted of their uniqueness in liberating themselves during World War II ‘without foreign intervention’, and have boasted even more of constructing a unique system of ‘socialist self-management’ within which historically rooted ethnic antagonisms have been resolved. This institutional system paid considerable attention to ethni...
Inter-ethnic tension and anatagonism in Yugoslavia has been on the rise during the 1980s, taking on many forms. An attempt was made to test four approaches to explaining these phenomena. The Marxist approach of studying the problem as one of exploitation is both difficult to operationalize and inadequate in a regulated society, as the economy is no...
Projects
Projects (8)
The main goal of the research project is to analyse cultural participation of young people (between 12 and 34 years old) in Slovenia and Europe. It also aims to examine key macro– and micro–level determinants and consequences of cultural participation, including socioeconomic and democratic development, cultural funding and supply, as well as health outcomes, civic participation and school performance. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the project will, among other aims, also develop a typology of cultural participation in connection with their value orientations and life transitions (e.g., transitions between different levels of education, from schooling to employment (or precarity), leaving the parental home, transition to parenthood, etc.).
Project is financed by Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia and Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS).
To discover patterns of social inequalities in education in Slovenia.