Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State is a collection of twelve essays taking an in-depth look at the multi-layered relationships between different groups in Macedonia from an anthropological perspective. Daniel M. Knight finds the book to offer revealing insights into the rich tapestry of life in modern-day Macedonia, especially in the areas of religion and ethnicity

Knight, Daniel Martyn

LSE Research Online

16/10/2013Book Review: Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic andCultural Foundations of a Balkan State, edited by Victor C. DeMunck and Ljupcho Risteskiblogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/10/16/book-review-macedonia-the-political-social-economic-and-cultural-foundations-of-a-balkan-state/Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State is acollection of twelve essays taking an in-depth look at the multi-layered relationships betweendifferent groups in Macedonia from an anthropological perspective. Daniel M. Knight finds the bookto offer revealing insights into the rich tapestry of life in modern-day Macedonia, especially in theareas of religion and ethnicity.Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State.Edited by Victor C. De Munck and Ljupcho Risteski. I.B. Tauris. October 2012.Find this book Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of aBalkan State is an ambitious attempt at a holistic evaluation of contemporaryMacedonia and is a much needed contribution to the anthropology of theBalkans. Through diverse ethnographic cases exploring religious belief,ecology, space, gender and wider questions of international politics andEuropean integration, the reader is invited to acknowledge the editors’ premisethat Macedonia is a ‘sustainable multicultural  Balkan country’.Approaching the volume as a Greek specialist working in the Greek peripheriesof Thessaly and Western Macedonia, I fall into the category of scholar identifiedby Victor de Munck and Ljupcho Risteski on page one of the introduction. Theeditors have made a conscious effort to move away from yet another analysis of‘The Macedonian Question’, often provided by academics with primary interestssouth of the border. Instead they offer insights into the rich tapestry of everydaylife in a complex modern nation-state. The repetitive introductory statements infavour of participant observation as the principal mode of enquiry may seem obsolete; surely everyone knows thatparticipant observation is the mainstay of anthropological enquiry, it is the very foundation of our discipline?However, recent trends for the over-theorisation of social practice regularly cloud ‘lived experience’. The emphasisplaced here on participant observation not only opens the discussion to readers beyond the realm of anthropology,but also serves as a much needed reminder of the rewards of staying true to a method at the heart of the discipline.With this tantalising preface in place, one delves into the first chapter with some anticipation, expecting to moveaway from well-documented stereotypes towards a qualitative appraisal of life in contemporary Macedonia. VictorFriedman’s contribution is all about Greece. He describes an attack in Athens by the far-right openly neo-Nazi‘Golden Dawn’ at a book launch for the first Greek-Macedonian dictionary. Whilst, personally, I wholeheartedly shareFriedman’s position that the lack of Greek recognition for ethno-linguistic minorities is tiresome and in manyrespects deplorable, I honestly fail to see what this paper adds to a volume on everyday life in contemporaryMacedonia. As a fellow witness of nationalist outbursts both in Greece and abroad, the ethnographic endeavourshould really be on attempting to understand the rising popularity of the Greek far-right rather than essentialisinghow ‘Greeks’ have tried to eliminate other languages in the Balkans for centuries. In this respect I am unsure1/3whether Friedman’s contribution assists our endeavour to unpack a native’s point of view. The argument is nothelped by the subjective tone and temporal leaps from pre-independence texts published in 1802 to an attack by anotorious neo-Nazi group in 2009. The cultural and historical understanding of Greek-Macedonian ethno-linguisticrelations on the local level, although a well-trodden path, may have been a more valuable contribution as the firstchapter of this particular volume.In following chapters, Anastasia Karakasidou and Jonathan Schwartz discuss environment and ecology. On theGreek side of the border, Karakasidou reflects on fieldnotes taken in the late 1980s that illustrate changes inenvironmental practice in the name of modernity and nationalism. Her retrospective observations on ‘water, air, fire,earth’ are important and highlight how the anthropological lens is so often shaped by the immediate concerns of theresearcher. Her discussion of cancer will be familiar to any Greek ethnographer. However, in such local accounts itis often difficult to identify the point where fact and fiction merge, such is the dense fusion of individual experience,media reportage and conspiracy theory. Karakasidou’s concerns with waste, responsibility, and technologicaldevelopment will resonate with anyone interested in Balkan renewable energy initiatives that have been packagedas essential to political and economic ‘progress’. On the Greek-Albanian-Macedonia border Schwartz analyses therole of civil society in environmental programmes around Lake Prespa. His engaging paper is a strong contributionto ‘NGOgraphy’ and provides a fascinating background to ecological management in the area.Macedonian Roma community in celebration. Credit: moroccanmary CC BY-NC-SA 2.0Religion and ethnicity are prominent themes throughout the volume. Violeta Duklevska Schubert explores theaffinity between Orthodox Christianity and national identity. In a paper that may appeal to scholars from otherBalkan contexts, she presents how religion and culture are ideologically and spatially intertwined. Orthodoxyprovides the ‘background noise’ of everyday social life. Although this view is by no means revolutionary, Schubertprovides a well-rounded account of how religion is lived on an everyday basis. Imbued with the themes of religionand ethnicity, Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic and Shayna Plaut offer papers on Roma Gypsies. In a rich socio-historic account Oustinova-Stjepanovic does an impressive job of tying together the ethnographic particularities of2/3‘performative failure’ as her subjects attempt to become ‘true Islamic mystics’. Apart from providing a delicate essayon Dervish lodges, she also manages to capture the continued Ottoman presence in the lives of some 21st centuryMacedonians which raises fascinating questions of historical consciousness and temporality. Plaut’s chapterfocuses on external studies of Macedonian Roma within a broader context of Western presence in the Republic.She discusses civil society movements in relation to neo-colonialism that is poignant across the Balkans, as well asraising complicated issues of citizenship and sovereignty.Other chapters in the volume examine issues of European belonging (Ilka Thiessen, de Munck and Joseph Moldow),nationalism and cultural heritage (Davorin Trpeski), gender (de Munck and Trpeski) and minorities (Burcu AkanEllis). I especially enjoyed the chapter by Rozita Dimova entitled “Topography of Spatial and Temporal Ruptures”where the author draws on the work of Walter Benjamin to explore time and materiality. Anyone with interests intheories of time as ‘topological’ or ‘topographical’ as opposed to linear will enjoy this paper, based as it is in blend ofsound qualitative research and historical ‘detective work’. Her chapter leaves one wanting to read more.On the whole the volume is a pleasurable read. It succeeds in framing the ‘multilayered relationships betweendifferent groups in Macedonia’, building up from the grassroots to questions of state politics and Europeanbelonging. This ‘scaling’ is essential for any contemporary anthropological study of the Balkans. Indeed, somecontributors, such as Oustinova-Stjepanovic, propose that the comparative study should stretch far beyond theborders of southeast Europe. The underlying flavour of Ottoman history that runs throughout the book provides awelcome sub-plot. This informs an ongoing theme of remembering/forgetting that is particlualrly intriguing. There isenough to hold the attention of readers with specialist interests in the wider Balkan region and although somechapters may leave the reader yearning for more detail, in a collection of twelve short essays this can only be agood thing._________________________________ Daniel M. Knight is National Bank of Greece Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, LondonSchool of Economics and Political Science. His ongoing anthropological research on the Greek economic crisisaddresses issues of polytemporality, historical consciousness and entrepreneurism. Daniel is currently leading aproject on economic sustainability and the Greek photovoltaic energy initiative. Read more reviews by DanielCopyright 2013 LSE Review of Books3/3

Book review: Macedonia: the political, social, economic and cultural foundations of a Balkan state

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