Kosovo fieldwork: cultural property ownership; Serbian Orthodox Church

Kosova/Kosovo fieldwork notes extracts

Contemplating conflicts over cultural property ownership, the nature of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the potential for the establishment of an autocephalous Kosovan Orthodox Church, at 4.35am on the 28th of July 2005, I pondered:

Would multiethnic Orthodox Christian site ownership in Kosovo require establishment of multiethnic Orthodox Christian Church in Kosovo and reduction of Serbian Orthodox Christian Church [Serbian Orthodox Church] to within the borders of Serbia proper?

What are the historical precedents (including within Islam, possibly, if decide best to retain united "Serbian" Orthodoxy,as it is only through that, realistically, that Muslim Albanians could be convinced)?

Could it remain Serbian Orthodoxy, remain seated in Peje/Pec (is it still seated there or was it just seated there before?) or would that be seen as nationalist claim rather than religious administrative designation?

"Serbian" Orthodoxy comprises, or comprised, at least, Albanian Orthodox Christians too. Would split be possible or desirable? Would it be seen as equivalent nationalist claim by Albanians or Albanian Orthodox Christians?

Would it be a "simple" matter of waiting to see the resolution of status talks? Would, or is, a united "Serbian" Orthodoxy, a point of possible understanding and reconciliation? Is this so unarchaeological it's untrue? Still cultural property ownership...

There is a need to expand explorations of the possibility and desirability of the existence and use of sites as multicultural, multiethnic, multinational points of understanding and reconciliation...

At 5am on the 28th of July 2005, I asked, "what are the limits of consequentialism within the PGC [Gewirth's (1978) Principle of Generic Consistency]?"

Would the nationalist violence consequent to decision to devolve Kosovan Orthodox Church - or not - be taken into account within the calculation of which decision it was right to make?

Would that be dismissed as the perpetrators' responsibility, regardless of how predictable it is - or would it be cancelled out as the nationalist violence would be engaged in by whichever side felt oppressed?

Are there Bulgarian, Macedonian and other patriarchates or only Greek, Russian and Serbian? Was this whole discussion a pointless flurry of excitement as all the patriarchates are multicultural, multiethnic and multinational already?

Gewirth, A. 1978: Reason and morality. London: University of Chicago Press.

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