Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making(Routledge Borderlands Studies)

In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction 1. A Concept with Many Names 2. The Emergence of the Balkans as a Cultural-Historical Space 3. The Balkans as Autospace 4. The Balkans on the European Map 5. Nationalism in Transnational Guise 6. In the orbit of Eastern Europe 7. A Sonderweg or a Metaphor? Conclusion References Index

About the Author :
Diana Mishkova is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia, Bulgaria.

Review :
"This long-awaited book is a ground-breaking contribution to Balkan studies and to imagology in general. It constitutes a milestone in the debate on the construction of historical regions and opens a new horizon of interpretation by radically changing the perspective: it focusses on intraregional scholarly concepts of the Balkans, a region constructed by Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Greek researchers and research institutions. It elucidates Central and Eastern European scholarship on the region that has achieved, since the second half of the 19th century, important results in fields such as history, philology, linguistics, archaeology and anthropology, and that differs considerably from more politicised and prejudice-ridden discourses in the Anglo-American world… Far from being just a negative prejudice of Western travelogues and journalists, the Balkans emerge [here] as a highly complex cultural construction. Diana Mishkova´s book will thus change our understanding of a crucial debate in cultural studies." -- Oliver Jens Schmitt, Professor of Southeast European History, University of Vienna, and Head of the Department of Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria "The Balkans are crucial for an understanding of Europe’s 20th century: at the beginning and at the end, the Balkans loom large in European history and provide key caesuras. Anyone wanting to understand ‘Balkanism’ and its manifold meanings over time, and anyone wishing to obtain a deeper understanding of how this region of Europe has been ‘ticking’, will have to read Diana Mishkova’s entirely thrilling and path-breaking new book." -- Stefan Berger, Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany "…The book is aimed at researchers but can, by its method, be of interest to all those working on the implication of the sciences in the production of regions and "areas" or on the relations between the academic world and the political one. It [is] useful to all those who share the conviction that reflection on the boundaries of objects in the social sciences is a scientific, educational and ethical imperative." -- An excerpt from Svetlana Dimitrova in Lectures: An International Journal of Reviews in Social Sciences