Issue 2, 2020, of "Südosteuropa" features a thematic section on "Volunteering and Voluntary Associations in the Post-Yugoslav States", guest edited by Ana Kladnik (Ljubljana).

Tatjana Rakar and Zinka Kolarič (Ljubljana) examine the development of the civil society sector in Slovenia and its role in the country’s welfare system.

Ana Kladnik (Ljubljana) focuses on the role of volunteer fire departments in Slovenia around 1990 and argues that the volunteer firefighters, relying on their century-old tradition, profited from being recognised as a part of Slovene national substance.

Ana Ljubojević (Graz) analyses the transformation of youth voluntarism in Serbia on two levels: 1) institutional, i. e. by tracing the changes in organizing structures of the Young Researchers
of Serbia organization from 1980 to 2000; and 2) personal, i. e. by analysing personal experiences of volunteers in the last decade of the twentieth century.

Julia Nietsch (Paris) explores the fluctuating boundaries between voluntary associations and the political realm in Kosovo during the 1990s, when the Mother Teresa Society, after the mass dismissals of Kosovo-Albanians in the health sector, set up alternative healthcare centres, relying on the involvement of reportedly more than 7,000 volunteers.

Zlatiborka Popov-Momčinović (Pale) analyses volunteering in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on women’s activism in connection with values associated with the concept of civil society, such as
solidarity, equity, and reciprocity.

Anna Matthiesen (New York) considers how the legacy of radne akcije, the working campaigns once coordinated by the socialist Yugoslav state, is used to frame recent episodes of voluntarism, including the efforts of volunteers during the 2014 floods in Serbia, and charitable donations via SMS.

In the Open Section, Dubravka Stojanović (Belgrade) comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into "pessimistic" and "optimistic" responses, and outlining their respective consequences.

The book reviews are available open access at www.recensio.net