This innovative book documents border porosities that have
developed and persisted between Greece and North Macedonia over
different temporalities and at different localities. By drawing on
geology's ...approaches to studying porosity, Dimova argues that
similar to rocks and minerals that only appear solid and
impermeable, seemingly impenetrable borders are inevitably
traversed by different forms of passage. The rich ethnographic case
studies, from the history of railroads in the southern Balkans,
border town beauty tourism, child refugees during the Greek Civil
War, mining and environmental activism, and the urban renovation
project in Skopje, show that the political borders between states
do not only restrict or regulate the movement of people and things,
but are also always permeable in ways that exceed state
governmentality.
The Political Materialities of Borders seeks to produce social theory at/from the border; rather than apprehending the border as mere epiphenomenon to urban or state-driven social theoretical ...dynamics, it calls for a specificity to the border in border studies as a rejuvenated space for theoretical enquiry.
In post-1991 Macedonia,Barokfurniture came to represent affluence and success during a period of transition to a new market economy. This furniture marked the beginning of a larger Baroque style that ...influenced not only interior decorations in people's homes but also architecture and public spaces. By tracing the signifier Baroque, the book examines the reconfiguration of hierarchical relations among (ethnic) groups, genders, and countries in a transnational context. Investigating how Baroque has come to signify larger social processes and transformations in the current rebranding of the country, the book reveals the close link between aesthetics and politics, and how ethno-national conflicts are reflected in visually appealing ornamentation.
This paper examines competing forms of heritage in central Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. It shows how Macedonian law came to officially protect the city's Old Bazaar as cultural ...heritage of special importance in 2007. Yet the Bazaar constitutes a 'reluctant heritage' because locals have associated Ottoman-period architecture with Albanians, amidst ethno-political tensions between Albanians and Macedonians that have persisted since the socialist period. This heritage coexists in an uneasy tension with another 'undesirable heritage', namely, that of the socialist modernist architecture erected after a 1963 earthquake. In addition to tracing these competing forms of heritage, this article discusses the effects of the 'Skopje 2014ʹ project and underscores the relation of state-power to processes of heritage-making and gentrification in the city.
This special issue stems from the scholarly neglect and under-conceptualisation of the important role of heritage within gentrification processes, in both heritage and urban studies, and our ...conviction that such important nexus must be approached from a global, non-(Western) Eurocentric perspective (see Herzfeld 2009, 2010; Zhang 2013). Gentrification, along with closely related terms like ‘neighbourhood revitalisation’ and ‘regeneration’, is a key concept in urban studies. It primarily refers to a ‘new neoliberal urbanism’ (Smith 2002) that many scholars see as redefining cities worldwide. But gentrification has a much longer history. Ruth Glass’s original formulation (1964), based on inner-city London, referred specifically to middle-class outsiders rehabilitating decaying historic buildings inhabited by low-income populations. A key recent text on ‘planetary gentrification’ (Lees, Shin, and López-Morales 2016), however, follows Clark’s (2005, 258) expansive definition of gentrification as ‘a process involving a change in the population of land-users such that the new users are of a higher socio-economic status than the previous users, together with an associated change in the built environment through a reinvestment in fixed capital’ (see also Zukin 2010). If the original ‘pioneer gentrifiers’ in cities like London belonged to the cultural middle class and were looking for a left-liberal, cultured, cosmopolitan alternative to suburbanisation (see Ley 1996), gentrifiers especially since the 1990s include large-scale developers and governments (Smith 2002; Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008).
By following the monthly escapades of several female “border-crossers,” this paper explores their quest for budget-luxury in food, cosmetics and gambling from Greece to Macedonia. These ...border-crossing practices between the two countries are seemingly driven by feminine desire for beauty and luxury. At the same time, the act of crossing allows the women to feel as if they are “in charge of their lives” and able to exercise their individual agency in handling the financial crisis. My main aim in this paper is to show how precarity and vulnerability of some Greek female citizens since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2010 are being negotiated and contested due to two factors: the proximity of the border with the Republic of Macedonia and gender in which notions of femininity affect the agency of people crossing the border. “Being a real woman,” serves as a register of their “active” engagement and participation in dealing with the crisis. The effort of these women to actively participate and to be “in charge of one's own life” extends beyond the rubric of beauty and maintaining femininity in the hair salon or the beauty parlor. This “active” engagement often embodies entertainment, but also health and medical decisions thus affecting the “right to life” where crossing the border becomes the only alternative to one's well-being.
In this chapter I discuss border porosity as tourists in socialist Yugoslavia and the child refugees who had fled the Greek Civil War (1946–49) crossed the border between the two countries. Motivated ...by diametrically opposite reasons – some crossing the border for leisure and some fleeing war – the people who crossed the border have caused an enduring porosity that has persisted despite the rigid national policies of the two countries and the extraordinary conditions when these movements took place. I call this sedimentary porosity because sediments that consist of different mineral parts and particles solidify and form a
Conclusion Dimova, Rozita
Border Porosities,
09/2021
Book Chapter
My main intention in this book has been to offer a contrasting approach from that of previous scholarly works on borders that view borders as sites of governmentality or generative hybridity. I have ...attempted not to weigh the book down with plodding theoretical exegesis but, rather, by using porosity as a main analytical lens, to suggest a novel theoretical point that is demonstrated and ethnographically elaborated in each chapter. Although my conceptualization of porosity draws primarily from geology, it is an eclectically assembled notion that also draws on anthropology, political science, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. I have taken this eclectic
Tidal porosity Dimova, Rozita
Border Porosities,
09/2021
Book Chapter
This chapter expands the argument of border porosity onto the project “Skopje 2014” and the aesthetic remodeling of the capital of RN Macedonia. Propelled by the conflict with Greece over the name ...Macedonia and the persistent conflict with the Albanian (predominantly Muslim) minority, the remodeling of Skopje deserves closer scrutiny because it reveals the radical aestheticization of contemporary politics in Macedonia, and the drawing of borders and boundaries through the act of aestheticization. I argue that this project constitutes the establishing of effective borders that gave the name conflict a tangible, material manifestation and also created depictions of its socialist
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