Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe and Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade organized a conference “Us and Them – Symbolic Divisions in Society in Serbia”, which was held on July 7th and 8th, 2012, in Belgrade, Serbia. The conference is organized within the project “Social and Cultural Capital in Serbia” of the Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe, financially supported by the Regional Research Promotion Programme in the Western Balkans (RRPP).

At the conference 19 articles of researches from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Poland and Great Britain were presented. A debate was be opened on various types of symbolic divisions in Western Balkan societies (socio-economic, status, political, religious, ethnic, moral, cultural, gender, sexual, regional, urban/rural, divisions between the „European“ and „Oriental“ traditions and many others), on the ways they interweave (overlap, conflict…) and the extent these are „hardening“ into social boundaries and influencing social life in these societies.

A number of articles presented at the conference was published in the volume “Us and Them – Symbolic Divisions in Western Balkan Societies” (edited by Ivana Spasić and Predrag Cvetičanin) by the Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe in 2013 (ISBN 978-86-89079-03-6, 266 pages)