What drives a state's choice to assimilate, accommodate or exclude ethnic groups within its territory? In this innovative work on the international politics of nation-building, Harris Mylonas argues ...that a state's nation-building policies toward non-core groups - individuals perceived as an ethnic group by the ruling elite of a state - are influenced by both its foreign policy goals and its relations with the external patrons of these groups. Through a detailed study of the Balkans, Mylonas shows that how a state treats a non-core group within its own borders is determined largely by whether the state's foreign policy is revisionist or cleaves to the international status quo, and whether it is allied or in rivalry with that group's external patrons. Mylonas injects international politics into the study of nation-building, building a bridge between international relations and the comparative politics of ethnicity and nationalism.
Balkan Heritages Marinov, Tchavdar, Dr; Couroucli, Maria, Professor; Morgan, Catherine, Professor
2015, 20170515, 2017-04-21, 2017-05-15, 2016-01-28, Letnik:
1
eBook
This volume deals with the relation between heritage, history and politics in the Balkans. Contributions examine diverse ways in which material and immaterial heritage has been articulated, ...negotiated and manipulated since the nineteenth century. The major question addressed here is how modern Balkan nations have voiced claims about their past by establishing 'proof' of a long historical presence on their territories in order to legitimise national political narratives. Focusing on claims constructed in relation to tangible evidence of past presence, especially architecture and townscape, the contributors reveal the rich relations between material and immaterial conceptions of heritage. This comparative take on Balkan public uses of the past also reveals many common trends in social and political practices, ideas and fixations embedded in public and collective memories.
This volume deals with the relation between heritage, history and politics in the Balkans. Contributions examine diverse ways in which material and immaterial heritage has been articulated, negotiated and manipulated since the nineteenth century. The major question addressed here is how modern Balkan nations have voiced claims about their past by establishing ’proof’ of a long historical presence on their territories in order to legitimise national political narratives. Focusing on claims constructed in relation to tangible evidence of past presence, especially architecture and townscape, the contributors reveal the rich relations between material and immaterial conceptions of heritage. This comparative take on Balkan public uses of the past also reveals many common trends in social and political practices, ideas and fixations embedded in public and collective memories. Balkan Heritages revisits some general truths about the Balkans as a region and a category, in scholarship and in politics. Contributions to the volume adopt a transnational and trans-disciplinary perspective of Balkan identities and heritage(s), viewed here as symbolic resources deployed by diverse local actors with special emphasis on scholars and political leaders.
Fare Well, Illyria Binder, David
2013, 20131110, 2013-11-01, 2013-01-11
eBook
As a reporter for the prestigious New York Times the author interviewed many of the leading political figures of the Balkans (Illyria). He also sought out the area's intellectuals, many of them ...critical of their leaders, and everyday people who provide a sense of daily life. He devotes a chapter to each ethnic group from Vlachs to Serbs, talks about their differences and similarities, and does so without giving offense. He also provides a short historical account of the various places he visits, which deepens our understanding of the local cultures.
The Austro-Hungarian aristocrat of Transylvanian origin, Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877-1933), was one of the most adventuresome travelers and scholars of Southeast Europe in the early decades of the ...twentieth century. He was also a paleontologist of renown and a noted geologist of the Balkan Peninsula : many of his assumptions have been confirmed by science. The Memoirs of this fascinating figure deal mainly with his travels in the Balkans, and specifically in the remote and wild mountains of northern Albania, in the years from 1903 to 1914. They thus cover the period of Ottoman Rule, the Balkan Wars and the outbreak of the First World War. Nopcsa was a keen adventurer who hiked through regions of northern Albania. With time, he became a leading expert in Albanian studies. He was also deeply involved in the politics of the period. In 1913, Nopcsa even offered himself as a candidate for the vacant Albanian throne. The Introduction also tells of Nopcsa’s tragic death: he shot his Albanian secretary and partner before killing himself. The memoirs themselves reveal some references to his homosexuality for those who can read between the lines.
By exploring the development of ethnic diversity and national tensions in Bulgaria and Bosnia, while also drawing parallels with Macedonia, this volume uses the three most diversely populated areas ...in the Balkans to tackle complex issues. What institutions of state building are capable of managing diverse ethno-religious traditions and conflicting national identities? How do people on the ground respond to state-sponsored political projects at the local community level? In what ways do studies of cultural representations of ethno-national and religious conflicts call attention to inequality and human rights violations? How have studies of human rights problems in the Balkans contributed to changes in international law? More generally, what is the role of the humanities and social sciences in developing a discourse on the subject of conflict resolution and human rights? The volume engages the question of ethno-national conflicts and identities from three perspectives: historical interpretations of national conflict and ethno-religious tensions in the context of empire- and state-building; cultural debates as reflected in the use of language and dance, film, and media production and circulation as tools for nation-and community-building; and thirdly, current political controversies over national resurgence and human rights both in the post-Yugoslav war context and in connection to European Union integration.
Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans looks at the phenomenon of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans over the last two hundred years. It argues that the events that occurred during this time can be ...demystified, that the South East of Europe was not destined to become violent and that constructions of the Balkans as endemically violent misses a important political point and historical point. Carmichael provides an account of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans as a single historical phenomenon and brings together a vast array of primary and secondary sources to produce a concise and accessible argument. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of European studies, history and comparative politics.
In the late fifteenth century, the north-eastern Balkans were under-populated and under-institutionalized. Yet, by the end of the following century, the regions of Deliorman and Gerlovo were home to ...one of the largest Muslim populations in southeast Europe. Nikolay Antov sheds fresh light on the mechanics of Islamization along the Ottoman frontier, and presents an instructive case study of the 'indigenization' of Islam – the process through which Islam, in its diverse doctrinal and socio-cultural manifestations, became part of a distinct regional landscape. Simultaneously, Antov uses a wide array of administrative, narrative-literary, and legal sources, exploring the perspectives of both the imperial center and regional actors in urban, rural, and nomadic settings, to trace the transformation of the Ottoman polity from a frontier principality into a centralized empire. Contributing to the further understanding of Balkan Islam, state formation and empire building, this unique text will appeal to those studying Ottoman, Balkan, and Islamic world history.
This books draws a comparative balance of twenty years’ international media assistance in the five countries of the Western Balkans. The central question was what happens to imported models when they ...are transposed onto the newly evolving media systems of transitional societies. Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia undertook a range of media reforms to conform with accession requirements of the European Union and the standards of the Council of Europe, among others. The essays explore the nexus between the democratic transformation of the media and international media assistance. The cross-national analysis concludes that the effects of international assistance are highly constrained by the local context. From today’s vantage point it becomes obvious, that scaling media assistance does not necessarily improve outcomes. The experiences in the region suggest that imported solutions have not been very cognitive in all aspects of local conditions but international strategies tent to be rather schematic and lacked strategic approaches to promote media policy stability, credible media reform and implementation. The book offers valuable insights into the nature and effects of media assistance and the strategies deployed by international aid agencies, local political forces, media professionals, civil society organizations and other actors.
This collection of essays locates, investigates and challenges the manner in which the Balkans and the West have constructed each other since 1945. Scholars from the two sections of the continent ...explore a wide range of fiction, film, journalism, travel writing and diplomatic records both to analyse Western European balkanism and to study Balkan representations of the West over the last fifty years. The first section looks back to the Cold War, examining the divergent, often favourable images of the Balkans that existed in Western culture, as well as the variety of responses that appeared in South-East European writings on the West. The second section analyses the transitions that took place in representation during the 1990s. Here, contributors explore both the harsh denigration of the Balkans which came to dominate western discourse after the initial euphoria of 1989, and the emerging tradition of contesting Western balkanism in South-East European cultural production. Through this dual emphasis, the volume exposes the representational practices that help to maintain a deeply divided Europe, and challenges the economic and political injustices that result. Despite the rise to prominence of postcolonial theory, with its awareness of global inequality, the current crises in many parts of South-East Europe have received scant attention in literary and cultural studies. The Balkans and the West addresses this deficiency. Ranging in focus from Serbian cinema to Romanian travel literature, from Western economic writings to Yugoslav fiction, and from public discourse in Albania to NATO's vast propaganda machine, the essays offer wide insight into representation and power in the contemporary European context.
Andrew Hammond is a lecturer in twentieth-century literature at the Swansea Institute, University of Wales, UK
Contents: Introduction, Andrew Hammond; Britain and the Yugoslav general election of November 1945, Jim Evans; Primitivism and the modern: a prolonged misunderstanding, Felicity Rosslyn; The rhetoric of economics: Cold War representation of development in the Balkans, Michael Haynes; 'The red threat': Cold War rhetoric and the British novel, Andrew Hammond; Seeing red: America and its allies through the eyes of Enver Hoxha, Timothy Less; Paradoxes of occidentalism: on travel literature in Ceausescu's Romania, Alex Drace-Francis; Images of the west in Serbian and Croatian prose fiction, 1945-95, Celia Hawkesworth; Western writing and the (re)construction of the Balkans after 1989: the Bulgarian case, Yonka Krasteva; Albanians, Albanianism and the strategic subversion of stereotypes, Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers; Albania after isolation: the transformation of public perceptions of the west, Fatos Lubonja; Between a Balkan 'home' and the 'west': popular conceptions of the west in Bulgaria after 1945, Galia I. Valtchinova; Miloševic, Serbia and the west during the Yugoslav wars 1991-95, Tom Gallagher; Savage tribes and mystic feuds: western foreign policy statement on Bosnia in the early 1990s, Riikka Kuusisto; The Balkans conflict and the emergence of the information operations doctrine, Philip M. Taylor; War in the hall of mirrors: NATO bombing and Serbian cinema, Nevena Dakovic; Bibliography; Index.
German imperialism in Europe evokes images of military aggression and ethnic cleansing. Yet, even under the Third Reich, Germans deployed more subtle forms of influence that can be called soft power ...or informal imperialism. Stephen G. Gross examines how, between 1918 and 1941, German businessmen and academics turned their nation - an economic wreck after World War I - into the single largest trading partner with the Balkan states, their primary source for development aid and their diplomatic patron. Building on traditions from the 1890s and working through transnational trade fairs, chambers of commerce, educational exchange programmes and development projects, Germans collaborated with Croatians, Serbians and Romanians to create a continental bloc, and to exclude Jews from commerce. By gaining access to critical resources during a global depression, the proponents of soft power enabled Hitler to militarise the German economy and helped make the Third Reich's territorial conquests after 1939 economically possible.
