Scale and Cognition in Historical Constructions of Space

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The Balkans as an Idée-Force

The bulk of literature on the Balkans which has appeared since 1989 has made a lot of the stereotyped Western discourse about the region during the last two centuries. Local production of regional discourses, on the other hand, has been usually interpreted in terms of internalization of or mirror reactions to the Balkan stigmata. Typically, these studies concentrate on journalistic and ideological discourses, while there have been few attempts at reconstructing the history of the concept of “Balkans” which take into account scholarly and disciplinary discourses. The intention of this article is to confront this void by probing into some of the paradigmatic conceptualizations of the region of Balkans/Southeastern Europe, which had originated in the region itself with regional scholars who had reflected on and attempted to give an answer to the question of what was “common” to and specifically “Balkan” about the Balkans. This historical review finally leads to question the status of the Balkans as a legitimate “mental map” and unit of analysis.Le corpus de littérature paru sur les Balkans depuis 1989 a fait grand cas de la production occidentale de stéréotypes sur la région au cours des deux derniers siècles. La production locale de discours régionaux a d’ailleurs généralement été interprétée en termes d’intériorisation et de réactions en miroir au stigmate balkanique. Typiquement, ces études se focalisent sur les discours journalistiques et idéologiques, tandis qu’il y a eu peu de tentatives pour reconstruire l’histoire du concept de « Balkans » qui prennent en compte les discours académiques. L’intention de cet article est de se confronter à ce manque en explorant quelques unes des conceptualisations de la région des Balkans ou de l’Europe du sud-est qui ont émergé dans la région elle-même, sous la plume d’intellectuels et d’académiques qui ont réfléchi et cherché à donner une réponse à la question de ce qui peut être « commun » et spécifiquement « balkanique » aux Balkans. Cet examen historique de la littérature mène à interroger le statut des Balkans comme « carte mentale » légitime et unité d’analyse pertinente

Introduction: Towards a Framework for Studying the Politics of National Peculiarity in the 19th Century

THE PROJECT This volume is the result of a 15-month research work which brought together young scholars from different Southeast-European academic cultures on a project initiated and hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia in partnership with Collegium Budapest. The project entitled We, the People. Visions of National Peculiarity and Political Modernities in Southeastern Europe, is inscribed into a broad and daunting design: to help craft a more coherent methodological and structural..

We, the People

Analyzes the processes of nation-building in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century south-eastern Europe. A product of transnational comparative teamwork, this collection represents a coordinated interpretation based on ten varied academic cultures and traditions. The originality of the approach lies in a combination of three factors: [a] seeing nation-building as a process that is to a large extent driven by intellectuals and writers, rather than just a side effect of infrastructural modern..

Introduction: Towards a Framework for Studying the Politics of National Peculiarity in the 19th Century

THE PROJECT This volume is the result of a 15-month research work which brought together young scholars from different Southeast-European academic cultures on a project initiated and hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia in partnership with Collegium Budapest. The project entitled We, the People. Visions of National Peculiarity and Political Modernities in Southeastern Europe, is inscribed into a broad and daunting design: to help craft a more coherent methodological and structural..

Notes on the contributors

Bojan Aleksov is a lecturer in the history of Southeast Europe at the University College of London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and nationalism and the influence of modernization on religious institutions and popular religiosity in Central Europe and the Balkans. He works also on religious conversions, transition from Ottoman to “European” rule and the politics of history and historiography. He is the author of Religi..

We, the People

Analyzes the processes of nation-building in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century south-eastern Europe. A product of transnational comparative teamwork, this collection represents a coordinated interpretation based on ten varied academic cultures and traditions. The originality of the approach lies in a combination of three factors: [a] seeing nation-building as a process that is to a large extent driven by intellectuals and writers, rather than just a side effect of infrastructural modernization processes; [b] looking at the regional, cross-border ramifications of these processes (rather than in a rigid single-country-by-country perspective) and [c] looking at the autonomous role of intellectuals in these areas, rather than just seeing south-eastern Europe as an appendix to Europe-at-large, passively undergoing European influences. The essays explore the political instrumentalization of the concepts of folk, people and ethnos in south-eastern Europe in the “long 19th century” by mapping the discursive and institutional itineraries through which this set of notions became a focal point of cultural and political thought in various national contexts; a process that coincided with the emergence of political modernity. "In the history of emerging national awareness in Europe, the formerly Ottoman- and Habsburg-ruled regions in the continent’s South-East present a case of unusual complexity and interest. South-East Europe combines geopolitical regional cohesion and ethno-linguistic diversity, and witnessed the emergence of a complex cluster of both early and tardy nation-building movements in close proximity and overlap, antagonism and exchange. Hitherto largely underresearched (owing to political conditions and ingrained preconceptions), this south-eastern microcosm of Europe now takes its proper place in the panorama of European intellectual history thanks to this excellent volume. We, the People is a landmark book. It applies the latest theoretical insights and comparatist approaches to a wealth of relevant and fascinating case studies, which, besides their intrinsic importance, are now made available for comparative European and macro-regional historical research." Prof. dr J. Th. Leerssen, Chair of Modern European Literature, University of Amsterda

We, the People

Analyzes the processes of nation-building in nineteenth and early-twentieth-century south-eastern Europe. A product of transnational comparative teamwork, this collection represents a coordinated interpretation based on ten varied academic cultures and traditions. The originality of the approach lies in a combination of three factors: [a] seeing nation-building as a process that is to a large extent driven by intellectuals and writers, rather than just a side effect of infrastructural modernization processes; [b] looking at the regional, cross-border ramifications of these processes (rather than in a rigid single-country-by-country perspective) and [c] looking at the autonomous role of intellectuals in these areas, rather than just seeing south-eastern Europe as an appendix to Europe-at-large, passively undergoing European influences. The essays explore the political instrumentalization of the concepts of folk, people and ethnos in south-eastern Europe in the “long 19th century” by mapping the discursive and institutional itineraries through which this set of notions became a focal point of cultural and political thought in various national contexts; a process that coincided with the emergence of political modernity. "In the history of emerging national awareness in Europe, the formerly Ottoman- and Habsburg-ruled regions in the continent’s South-East present a case of unusual complexity and interest. South-East Europe combines geopolitical regional cohesion and ethno-linguistic diversity, and witnessed the emergence of a complex cluster of both early and tardy nation-building movements in close proximity and overlap, antagonism and exchange. Hitherto largely underresearched (owing to political conditions and ingrained preconceptions), this south-eastern microcosm of Europe now takes its proper place in the panorama of European intellectual history thanks to this excellent volume. We, the People is a landmark book. It applies the latest theoretical insights and comparatist approaches to a wealth of relevant and fascinating case studies, which, besides their intrinsic importance, are now made available for comparative European and macro-regional historical research." Prof. dr J. Th. Leerssen, Chair of Modern European Literature, University of Amsterda