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Dear reader,
 This is the third (and final) issue for the year of Družboslovne razprave – So-
cial Science Forum. Unlike the previous (double) issue, this one is not thematic; 
instead, showcasing a selection of articles and book reviews on a range of timely 
topics and discussions in the social sciences and humanities in general, as well 
as specifically in South-East Europe. The task at hand is as complex as it may 
seem, with the issue certainly proving to be a challenge to process and compile. 
We therefore dedicate this introductory note to everyone who took part in this 
laborious enterprise. Especially, we wish to thank the authors of the articles in 
this issue, and the anonymous peer reviewers whose invisible efforts are one 
of this journal’s key quality assurance mechanisms. The reviewers’ passion for 
knowledge production and ensuring high standards for scientific contributions 
shapes the content of Social Science Forum in considerable ways, yet their input 
remains under the radar. 
 Peer review is an integral part of the Social Science Forum’s publication pro-
cess. While the main editors hold the right and responsibility to reject formally, 
structurally or thematically inadequate submissions before peer review, they 
cannot publish papers that have not undergone peer review. Each article is 
therefore anonymised and sent off to two experts in the field or – if these prove 
difficult to find – an expert in the field and a generalist, who evaluate the sub-
missions and provide guidelines for improvement. This model ensures the latest 
developments are included in academic knowledge production. Peer review has 
been increasingly viewed as “one of the fundamental conditions of possibility of 
academic knowledge and the construction of its value” (Biagioli 2002: 11) since 
the end of World War II, and is even more so in the 21st century. At the same 
time, many concerns have been voiced regarding the objectivity, purposefulness 
and constructiveness of the procedure, leading journal editors to frequently 
reconsider what are the optimal procedures for preventing scientific fraud and 
streamline academic discourse, while leaving enough room for innovation and 
critical thought.
 Social Science Forum relies on the “double-blind” peer review model, meaning 
that the author and the reviewer are unaware of each other’s identity throughout 
the review process. While publication dispels the mystery around the authors’ 
identity, the reviewers’ names remain anonymous unless they specifically request 
that they be revealed to the authors (and may hence become accessible to 
the broader public should the authors choose to explicitly thank or otherwise 
acknowledge the reviewers in their publication). So far, the practice of reviewer-
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identity-disclosure has been rare, making it difficult to publicly acknowledge their 
impact on the quality of the journal. 
 While double-blind peer review has become ever more popular over the 
past decade, models which rely on varying degrees of anonymity also exist. A 
small minority of academic journals thus subscribes to the “no anonymity” model 
whereby both parties in the review process are aware of the other’s identity. This 
model may be praised for its transparency, yet it is also seen as the trickiest one 
to implement if the goal is to ensure the highest standards of bias-prevention. Two 
other models employ partial anonymity, either concealing the author’s name from 
the reviewer, or vice-versa. Until the 2010s, the latter, “single anonymity”, namely, 
anonymisation of the reviewer’s comments coupled with disclosure of the author’s 
name to the reviewer, dominated in most scientific disciplines (Brown 2006: 1275). 
The recent preference for the double-blind model may be attributed to growing 
concerns over ethnicity-, race-, gender-, institution- and seniority-related biases. 
And, in case you have been wondering, the “reverse single-blind” model, which 
discloses information about the reviewers to the authors, but not vice-versa, predict-
ably never gained traction, compromising the reviewers’ task by failing to grant 
them protection while potentially overexposing them, and possibly skewing their 
assessments.
 Social Science Forum takes peer review very seriously, appreciating its signifi-
cance for a journal that aims to promote the work of early-career scholars (among 
others), and to facilitate conversations across the social sciences and humanities. 
Our mission would be unthinkable without the efforts of our academic peers who 
see reading and reviewing their colleagues’ work as a rewarding investment of 
their time. To illustrate the scope of the endeavour: the minimal standard that 
Social Science Forum’s reviewers accept involves a succinct questionnaire al-
lowing space for a short comment of a minimum of 150 words. In practice, most 
of the reviews we receive are much longer, providing the authors with detailed 
instructions on how to refine their claims, re-think their concepts and methods, 
and asking them to rectify errors, or to highlight the most outstanding aspects of 
their argument. Further, the international nature of our pool of reviewers ensures 
the journal’s articles are adapted to speak to a broader, international academic 
public. In some cases, the reviewers must – or choose to – comment on second 
or even third versions of manuscripts. Speaking in terms of this issue of the journal 
you are now reading, eight reviewers from different research areas within the 
broader region were heavily involved in the review process, helping to improve 
the publication results. 
 Equally, our mission would be unthinkable without responsible authors who 
we request to carefully consider all of the reviewers’ suggestions, and to respond 
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to them, summing up their reflections, and describing the changes made. Finally, 
it is the journal’s technical editor, Jasmina Šepetavc, who kindly agrees to bear 
full responsibility for the professionalism of this process, ensuring the authors’ 
and reviewers’ anonymity. As editors, we find this level of commitment helpful 
and inspiring, and hope our readers feel the same way. Accordingly, we invite 
you to leaf through the latest set of texts generated by the process described 
above. 
 The issue begins with Aljoša Pužar’s theoretically rich discussion on the 
contemporary structures of melodramatic feeling, underpinned by a (digital) 
ethnographic examination of a specific case in point, and a diachronic compari-
son with similar events. Pužar aligns the recent collective bereavement of the 
regionally famous Yugoslav and Serbian singer Đorđe Balašević with popular 
reactions to the death of certain other “celebrity folk heroes”. He thereby points 
to the affective dimensions of such bereavement, sketching out how “economies 
of impossibility” are transformed into “melodramatic bursts of pseudopolitical 
(im)possibility”. 
 In the following article, Emanuela Fabijan and Marko Ribać follow up on 
popular sentiment, presenting the findings of an empirical study on populism 
in and by Slovenian media (television news programmes) in the context of the 
2015–2016 migration crisis. The authors trace “populist antagonisms” in media 
narratives, shedding light on how these emerge in both political and media 
communication, and questioning the role of political television interviews in the 
reproduction of populism through the conundrum of television logic and ritualised 
journalistic conventions.
 The second half of the issue returns to the spectrum of the pandemic that 
has haunted knowledge production over the past 2 years. Marjan Svetličič’s 
theoretical reflection on the philosophical, political and social significance of the 
COVID-19 crisis offers an impressive literature review of these topics, expounding 
on the proposition that the crisis might be productively thought of as a “turning 
point”, pushing humankind to part with anthropocentrism and to take on a more 
ecocentric worldview. In an attempt to provide a feasible basis for this ambitious 
plan, Svetličič revisits the basic tenants of capitalist and socialist sociopolitical 
programmes, seeking a “hybrid model”, and stressing the importance of the State 
in these efforts. 
 The issue concludes with Marjan Smrke and Mitja Hafner Fink who offer an 
empirically grounded view on the local ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, 
scrutinising the underlying causes of Slovenia’s poor virus-containment figures. 
The authors offer a sociological take on the question, presenting the results of 
two public opinion surveys. Analysis of the respondents’ reasons for (non)com-
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INTRODUCTION
pliance with (or defection from) the national pandemic-containment measures 
reveals a complex matrix, where the lack of trust in the government stands out 
as an important factor.
 Apart from original research papers, this issue contains four book reviews. 
The books are all recent Slovenian translations of selected classics curated by 
Social Science Forum’s book reviews editor Klemen Ploštajner, and revealing 
another dimension of the review process in academia: its capacity to excite the 
reader about scholarship. This month’s selection includes books by Simone de 
Beauvoir (the second part of The Coming of Age, reviewed by Metka Mencin), 
Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, reviewed by Zala Gruden), Pierre 
Bourdieu (Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, reviewed by Marko Ribać), 
and bell hooks (Where We Stand: Class Matters, reviewed by Klara Otorepec).
Natalija Majsova and Tanja Oblak Črnič, editors in chief
Bibliography 
Brown, Richard JC (2007): Double anonymity in peer review within the chemistry peri-
odicals community. Learned publishing, 20 (2): 131–137.
Biagioli, Mario (2002): From book censorship to academic peer review. Emergences: 
Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures, 12 (1): 11–45.