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.
Fare Well, Illyria Binder, David
2013, 20131110, 2013-11-01, 2013-01-11
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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.
Balkan Heritages Marinov, Tchavdar, Dr; Couroucli, Maria, Professor; Morgan, Catherine, Professor
2015, 20170515, 2017-04-21, 2017-05-15, 2016-01-28, Letnik:
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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.
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.
Balkan genocides Mojzes, Paul
2011., 2011, 2011-10-16, 20110101
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During the 20th century, the Balkan Peninsula was affected by three major waves of genocides and ethnic cleansings, some of which are still being denied today. In Balkan Genocides Paul Mojzes ...provides a balanced and detailed account of these events, placing them in their proper historical context and debunking the common misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the genocides themselves. A native of Yugoslavia, Mojzes offers new insights into the Balkan genocides, including a look at the unique role of ethnoreligiosity in these horrific events and a characterization of the first and second Balkan wars as mutual genocides. Mojzes also looks to the region's future, discussing the ongoing trials at the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and the prospects for dealing with the lingering issues between Balkan nations and different religions. Balkan Genocides attempts to end the vicious cycle of revenge which has fueled such horrors in the past century by analyzing the terrible events and how they came to pass.
Fully illustrated, Prehistoric Figurines brings a radical new approach to one of the most exciting, but poorly understood artefacts from our prehistoric past. Studying the interpretation of ...prehistoric figurines from Neolithic southeast Europe, Bailey introduces recent developments from the fields of visual culture studies and cultural anthropology, and investigates the ways in which representations of human bodies were used by the pre-historic people to understand their own identities, to negotiate relationships and to make subtle political points. Bailey examines four critical conditions: * figurines as miniatures * figurines as three-dimensional representations * figurines as anthropomorphs * figurines as representations. Through these conditions, the study travels beyond the traditional mechanisms of interpretation and takes the debate past the out-dated interpretations of figurines as Mother-Goddess as Bailey examines individual prehistoric figurines in their original archaeological contexts and views them in the light of modern exploitations of the human form. Students and scholars of History and Archaeology will benefit immensely from Bailey's close understanding of the material culture and pre-history of the Balkans.
Dr Douglass Bailey is Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University and a world authority on the prehistory of eastern Europe. He has conducted fieldwork in Romania and Bulgaria and written on a wide range of topics including art, architecture, and the politics of archaeology. His Balkan Prehistory (Routledge 2000) is the standard text on the southeast European Neolithic
1. Introduction 2. Miniaturism and Dimensionality 3. Hamangia 4. Anthropomorphism: Dolls, portraits and body parts 5. Cucuteni-Tripolye 6. Visual Rhetoric, Truth and the Body 7. Thessalian 8. Subverting and Manipulating Reality 9. Conclusions
‘There is certainly much of interest here, Many of the sources that Bailey brings to bear are completely novel to existing scholarship on prehistoric figurines, and they yield some real insights. The book itself is engagingly written and well illustrated. Discussions of the diverse sources make for a lively read.’ – Cambridge Archaeological Journal
'Whatever you know about prehistoric figurines, this book will open your eyes and make you think... Bailey halps the reader all the way, with a meticulously constructed tect, written in an absorbing style; it combines some closely observed descriptions of the forms of figurines with comprehensive syntheses of their archaeological contexts, critical reviews of previous studies and interpretations, accessible explanations of complex ideas about human representation, and a selection of photographs and line drawings that work actively alongside the text... this is an outstanding book, because it poses so many thought-provoking questions about the complex qualities of visual representations of human bodies in the past and their significance today. – Antiquity
'...engagingly written and well illustrated...Bailey makes a bold effort to open up interpretation of Neolithic figurines from southeastern Europe...provoking thoughts far beyond any traditional archaeological bounds.' – Richard G. Lesure, University of California
Balkan Legacies John Paul Newman, Balázs Apor / John Paul Newman, Balázs Apor
2021, 2021-06-15
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Balkan Legacies is a study of the aftermath of war and state socialism in the contemporary Balkans. The authors look at the inescapable inheritances of the recent past and those that the present has ...to deal with. The book's key theme is the interaction, often subliminal, of the experiences of war and socialism in contemporary society in the region. Fifteen contributors approach this topic from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and through a variety of interpretive lenses, collectively drawing a composite picture of the most enduring legacies of conflict and ideological transition in the region, without neglecting national and local peculiarities. The guiding questions addressed are: what is the relationship between memories of war, dictatorship (communist or fascist), and present-day identity—especially from the perspective of peripheral and minority groups and individuals? How did these components interact with each other to produce the political and social culture of the Balkan Peninsula today? The answers show the ways in which the experiences of the latter part of the twentieth century have defined and shaped the region in the twenty-first century.
Mirroring Europe offers refreshing insight into the ways Europe is imagined, negotiated and evoked in Balkan societies in the time of their accession to the European Union.
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.