I am in touch with many psychologists from Belgrade and some from Croatia.
They did have problems with lines - especially those in Serbia because of
the economic sanctions (which included among other things, cutting off
e-mail and Internet services, prohibition of international publishing for
the academics from Serbia etc). Tunde Kovac-Cerovic, that Peter mentions did
an extensive work in developing those conflict resolution workshops based in
Vygotsky's theory I mentioned earlier. There was also a terrific project in
collaboration with the Croatian psychologists to reunite the population of a
smallish town in eastern Slavonia which had been divided into "Croats" and
"Serbs" and lived with a barricade in between (like Berlin). They have, the
psychologists suceeded to get the barricades down and to start rebuilding
houses on both sides with mutual cooperation. This project was, alas,
terminated with the last summer Croatian taking of Krajina (regions in
Croatia with Serbian population).
I have also organized a symposium on APA 94 with 5 papers from the former Yu.
They range from the children's workshops (above), work with people in the
post traumatic shock who have lost someone in their family, to studying
media (my work).
A general remark I expressed earlier is that the former-Yu psychologists
have assumed a much more problem oriented approach to try to treat urgencies
- not so much to study them. In the past 5 years, there have been far less
"basic" studies, studies which deal with psychological processes in an
abstract, detached way (like we do it here on this discussion group and in
the majority of the papers published in the professional journals), and many
hands on projects to help the wounded people.
But I don't know all of the work - especially not in the areas where I
didn't have any personal friends before I came to the USA (long time before
the war).
However, the question was, as I understood it, how do we define our moral
stands toward various extreme ideologies, and stay cultural, social
relativists? How do we deal, as professionals, with belief systems which are
in opposition to our own, which even may be repulsive to us? And, how do we
understand cultural-historical, social and psychological processes which
lead to violence and destruction? Finally, how do we intervene, what do we
do to prevent such processes to develop in the first place, or to channel
them toward some other kind of responses? There are hundreds of questions,
all connected to the very issues we are discussing in the context of education.
This is getting too long, but I would like to outline some of these issues
in another posting one of these days.
Ana
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. Office of Mental Health and
Philadelphia, PA 19144 Mental Retardation
(215) 843-2909 [voice] 1101 Market St. 7th Floor
(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 685-4767 [v]
(215) 685-5581 [fax]
E-mail: pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
http://www.geocities.com./Athens/2253/index.html
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