Des passions nationales virtualisées

L’état d’esprit que l’on appelle « nationalisme » paraît de nos jours tenir davantage d’une communauté de fans que d’une quelconque doctrine politique. Cela est vrai en particulier pour les générations les plus jeunes qui socialisent en ligne et qui ont grandi dans un monde fluide de désinstitutionalisation globale. À partir d’exemples de nationalisme en ligne en Bulgarie, recueillis ces dernières années par le biais d’une analyse des médias suivie dans certains cas d’entrevues en ligne et en personne, j’avance que la nouvelle constellation médiatique a en grande partie accentué cette évolution. De façon plus générale, celle-ci est liée au virage culturel qui a transformé la culture, la faisant passer d’une façon d’être à une façon de posséder.The state of mind called « nationalism » seems to be closer nowadays to fandom than to some political doctrine. This is especially true for the younger generation of online socialization, having grown up in a world of global deinstitutionalization and fluidity. Using examples of web-nationalism in Bulgaria collected over the last years through media analysis, followed in some cases by online and face-to-face interviewing, I will argue that the new media constellation has largely enhanced such development. More generally speaking, it is linked to the cultural turn that has transformed culture from a mode of being into one of possessing.El estado mental que denominamos « nacionalismo » actualmente se presenta más como una comunidad de fanáticos que como una doctrina política. Eso es particularmente cierto para las generaciones más jóvenes que socializan en línea y que han crecido en un mundo fluido de des-institucionalización global. A partir de ejemplos de nacionalismo en línea en Bulgaria, recopilados durante los últimos años a través de un análisis de los medios, seguidos de algunos casos de entrevista en línea y en persona, sostengo que la nueva constelación mediática ha acentuado en gran medida dicha evolución. De una manera más general, dicha evolución está ligada al cambio cultural que ha transformado la cultura, haciéndola pasar de una manera de ser a una manera de poseer

La territorialité dans la logique du don

Ditchev Ivaylo. La territorialité dans la logique du don. In: Quaderni, n°34, Hiver 1997-98. L'incertitude des territoires. pp. 69-79

Territory, identity, transformation : A Baltic-Balkan comparison

First published in Eurozine (English version) / Kulturos barai 10/2010 (Lithuanian version)Lithuania and Bulgaria: two nations on the peripheries of central Europe, both bearing strong traces of former Empires. Subjected to neoliberal forces of disintegration, historical identities re-pattern along new lines of conflict, the politics of '89 now redundant in the regulated zone of market democracy that is new Europe. Ivaylo Ditchev and Tomas Kavaliauskas share Baltic-Balkan perspectives on the presentVytauto Didžiojo universiteta

When Seve met Bregovi?: folklore, turbofolk and the boundaries of Croatian musical identity

Popular music in Croatia has consistently been a field where the boundaries of national cultural identity are set, contested and transgressed. The most contentious boundaries involve Serbian culture and the abstract “east”, to which essentialized nationalist concepts of Croatian culture denied any similarity. The Croatian singer Severina’s attempt to represent Croatia at the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest with her song Moja štikla (My stiletto) called these aspects into question with connotations which could be claimed as both Croatian and Serbian. Although the song was justified with reference to the (disputed) authenticity of Croatian folklore, it ultimately suggested that Croatian cultural space could not be separated from that of the other ex-Yugoslav states

The Council of Europe after Enlargement: an Anthropological Enquiry

Document de travail du CEFRES n°18The Council of Europe after enlargement is characterised by the tension between - the pursuit of geopolitical or pragmatic interests on the one side and - the defence of supranational humanitarian values on the other. This tension runs through all the sections of the Council dividing the employees into idealists and pragmatists - into those who wish to work towards a greater understanding among the people of Europe - and those who want to get on with their job and make sure that they keep it. The political representatives of the member states are split - into those who claim a certain moral supremacy because the countries they represent have been democracies for some time - and those who claim an egalitarian status in the Council because their countries as new democracies and members of the Council are entitled to it. The main controversy which is hardly openly discussed, is about who should learn and who should teach in the Council of Europe. A clear difference in attitude can be seen between the political bodies of the Council and the administrative bodies charged with educational programs. - In the political bodies where all countries are theoretically exercising their influence on an egalitarian basis, the discourse about values becomes part of the strive for power and influence. The idea, that representatives from post-communist countries have to learn democracy from the representatives of Western European countries, has been present in many interviews with ambassadors and delegates from Western Europe. Among Eastern European representatives emphasis is put on the fact, that they are already democracies, which is proved by the fact that they have become members of the Council. Their main concern now is how to make their voices heard in the Council. In spite of formal equality, proposals of Eastern European representatives do not carry the same weight. They are not listened to in the same way. This could be observed, for instance, when East European suggestions for conflict solution in Kosovo were ignored in the Committee of Ministers in the summer of 1998.- The administrative bodies of the council are confronted with the fact that the new member countries refuse openly the concept of assistance and assume that the transfer of democratic values towards their societies is unnecessary. At the same time the certainty of European values, such as democracy, plurality and the rule of law, can be observed to dissolve when confronted with concrete social practice.The sections of the Council most prominently involved in educational programmes also towards Eastern European societies, such as the Section for the Education in Democratic Citizenship and the Youth Centre, have been loosing track of the model that they are supposed to promote. - The section for the Education in Democratic Citizenship tries to avoid the dilemma by encouraging examples for good democratic practice that already exist in the member countries. - Employees of the Youth Centre who organise training courses for the youth elite from Eastern and Western Europe try to do so without imposing any model. The people they train, however, are keen on finding out how these Western European societies function and happily hear about their models in order to use them in their own dealings with European institutions. The educational practice of the Council clearly reinforces an already existing elite that can use the know-how about the West acquired in the Council to reinforce its position back home. A concept of diversity advocated by the Council, for instance in the Roma Network fixes and simplifies images of the Others, whose reality is far more complex. An elite of young Roma leaders from all over Europe is brought together under the auspices of the Council, thereby creating a European Roma discourse that has never previously existed and that covers up the heterogeneity of the Roma societies.The Council of Europe still has a long way to go before becoming a forum in which communication on an egalitarian basis can take place. It still has to confront itself with the complex social and economic reality of its post-communist member states. 1. To name only one of the taboo subjects of the Council: a thorough debate without prejudice is needed on the socialist past of the new member states, its values, achievements and shortcomings. 2. Another taboo subject of the Council - the critical evaluation of liberal market economy - has recently been broken by delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly who came to the conclusion that democratic social control cannot stop short from the economy and that a thoroughly new debate on democracy and economy is needed in post-communist Europe, in the East and in the Wes