A. Dimou, review of Vangelis Calotychos: The Balkan Prospect. Identity, Culture and Politics in Greece after 1989 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2005
Journal of Modern Greek Studies 25:1 (May 2005): 204-208. This multidisciplinary volume draws from a conference entitled "Greece and the Balkans: Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment," held at Birmingham University in the United Kingdom, on June 28–30, 2001. It explored cultural relationships between Greece and other Balkan countries in the areas of language, literature, history, dress, religion, translation, and music (but notably not film). Issues prioritized related to identity and perception among Balkan peoples since the Enlightenment at a time when the historical legacies of nationalism and Cold War communism have seen to it that these peoples look to Europe for a common future and (self)recognition and less so to each other. If, today, Greece sees itself (again) as a guide for its neighbors' European progress and modernization, such posturing seems imperious to recipients of such assistance. While for many Greeks, the desire to relate to the Balkans is seen as taking a step backwards to a prior stage in Greek development. Consequently, the Greek financial, cultural, and political demarche to the Balkans since the 1990s hardly captivates the Greek popular imagination. In a succinct introduction, the editor, Dimitris Tziovas, lays out the cultural, social, and political significance of the Balkans and the scholarly parameters for pursuing its analysis.
Between Culture and Politics: Identity, the Balkan Enlightenment, and the Greek War of Independence
In 1935, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga published Byzance après Byzance. In this text, Iorga argued that the Ottoman conquest did not erase all traces of Byzantine civilization. Instead, he contended that from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 on, Byzantium’s legacy shaped cultural, religious, and political institutions in the Balkans. Profoundly impacted by the Balkan Wars, Iorga thesis sought to emphasize the historical and cultural unity of the region over the divisions created by nationalist ideology. In some ways, Iorga’s paper, and the monograph he later published, prefigured contemporary historians’ reassessment of the national paradigm. In more recent decades, Paschalis Kitromilides has championed a similar line of thinking. Kitromilides points not only to the region’s shared traditions, but also to the ideological uses of a Byzantine ideal from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries and has called for a reexamination of the Balkan history from a transnational perspective. At the same time, Kitromilides has characterized the Balkan Enlightenment as a confrontation between tradition, based to a large extent on the Byzantine ideal and Christian Orthodoxy, and West European thought in the region. The Greek War of Independence brought this confrontation to a head. This paper explores if either the Byzance après Byzance or tradition-modernity model can help historians make sense of individuals’ motives and their complicated public and private personas during this period. To do so, it examines the biographies and political, economic, and philanthropic, endeavors of Iordache and Nicolae Rosetti-Roznovanu. The Rosetti-Roznovanus belonged to a “Phanariot” family that settled in Moldova in the seventeenth century. By the late eighteenth century, they were among the wealthiest and most political well-connected men in the Principality and were active in the Moldovan administration and commerce. Benefiting from a broad network of professional and personal contacts across the region and Europe, they attempted to shape local and international politics. They also lived through the Greek War of Independence, a moment that brought profound political, cultural, and social change to the Principalities and the Balkans. As educated individuals who left a wealth of archival records, the pair offers historians an interesting case study.
Everyday Life in the Balkans gathers the work of leading scholars across disciplines to provide a broad overview of the countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey. This region has long been characterized as a place of instability and political turmoil, from World War I, through the Yugoslav Wars, and even today as debate continues over issues such as the influx of refugees or the expansion of the European Union. However, the work gathered here moves beyond the images of war and post-socialist stagnation which dominate Western media coverage of the region to instead focus on the lived experiences of the people in these countries. Contributors consider a wide range of issues including family dynamics, gay rights, war memory, religion, cinema, fashion, and politics. Using clear language and engaging examples, Everyday Life in the Balkans provides the background context necessary for an enlightened conversation about the policies, economics, and culture of the region.
(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era
Geopolitics, 2006
For most Greeks, neighbouring countries like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania formed a terra incognita for almost half a century since the end of the Second World War. In the early 1990s communism collapsed in all four countries and despite the three bloody wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, information, goods and people crossed Balkan boundaries in unprecedented speed. The paper examines three geopolitical codes about the Balkans that successively dominated Greek views and policies in the last fifteen years: the idea of a menacing 'muslim arc', the image of the Balkans as a Greek 'natural hinterland' and the idea of the Balkans as an undisputed part of Europe. All these geopolitical ideas were introduced by the Greek political elite and influenced decisively both Greek foreign policy and public attitudes for about half a decade each. A man encounters an unfriendly group of warriors in the jungle. "Are you with us or with the others ?" the warriors ask. "With you" is the man's immediate answer. "Sorry", the warriors' retort, "we are the others." (Story told by Greek Ambassador Loucas Tsilas 1