Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey P. N. Diamandouros, T. Dragona, Ç. Keyder (eds.) London, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010 (book review in progress) (original) (raw)
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Hellenic Statecraft and the Geopolitics of Difference
2021
This book explores competing definitions of Hellenism in the making of the Greek state by drawing on critical historical and geopolitical perspectives and their intersection with difference and exclusion. It examines Greece's central role in shaping the state system, regional security, and nationalisms of the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean regions. Understanding the Greek state's social constitution reveals its past and present intentions and strategies as well as local, national, and European notions of security and identity. The book looks at the relation of subaltern communities to state power and the state's ability and willingness to negotiate difference. It also explores how the State's identity politics shaped regional geopolitics in the past two centuries. Chapters present case studies that shed light on the Hellenization of Jewish Thessaloniki, the Treaty of Lausanne's making of Western Thrace's Muslim minority, the role and modes of settlement, urbanization, and 'bordering-as-statecraft' in Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, and the politics of erecting the Athens Mosque, the first officially-licensed mosque outside Western Thrace since Greek Independence. With examples from fieldwork in Greek cities and borderlands, this book offers a wealth of primary research from geographers and historians on the modern history of Greek statecraft and nationcraft. It will be of key interest to scholars and students of political geography, international relations, and European history.
Nations and Nationalism, 2004
This paper aims to develop a model for the ethno-nationalist incorporation of the space and time -that is of the geography and history -of ethnies considered as 'others' by the ethno-nationalist core of an emerging nation-state. It contends that one of the reasons for the recurring power and emotive force of nationalist discourse and practice stems from the disjunction between the complex history of a locality -exemplified in its material culture -and the homogenised present, which various strategies of ethno-nationalist incorporation have brought about. Based on the analysis of the empirical evidence of the case of the city of (Sanli) Urfa in Southeast Turkey, it argues that a 'spatial perspective' focusing on the locale might facilitate unveiling hitherto understudied aspects of local nationalisms, as well as the rather dark sides of most nation-building projects such as large-scale population exchanges or ethnic cleansing.
Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Workshop. The City: Urban …, 2003
Nationalism understood as a modern concept, is a project of political and social engineering, which works through the invention of history and the reproduction of geography, space and architecture. The "geography of nationalism" is the spatial expression of strategies of exclusion, displacement and dispossession of the externalized 'other', as well as of strategies of re-construction and re-production for the sovereign and hegemonic 'self' of the nation. The analysis of the case of Turkey in the late 19 th and 20 th centuries exposes an almost ideal-typical model of the discursive imagination and the material practice of nationalism and its geographical strategies, aimed at the creation of an ethnically homogenous 'homeland'. These strategies and their consequences, however, are not unique to the Turkish case, but comparable to the nation-building processes of other 'late' nations, which have emerged out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire.
Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey by Umut �zkirimli & Spyros A. Sofos
Nations Natl, 2009
differences.' (p. 150). Chapter 7 highlights the uses of family and children-parent metaphors in presenting and interpreting Greece's relation with Britain. The chapter discusses critically the uses of gendered terms and in particular metaphors of parenting or 'mothering' the immature Greek nation. In the concluding chapter, the author argues that her argument about how formalised knowledge is intertwined with an intimate understanding of nation formation is relevant for Europe as a whole. Although the broad argument that 'European futures are overdetermined by European pasts activated in local context' (p. 178) is valid it remains unclear how the argument is served in this concluding chapter. Overall this is a refreshing critical book that complements a relatively long list of Anglophone (as well as Greek) literature on modern Greece and its nation formation endeavours. The book is innovative in its perspective, truly interdisciplinary and although much of the historical details and sources cited may attract the interest mainly of experts, its plain style makes it attractive to the general reader too. The title of the book though is slightly misleading as the book clearly concentrates on modern Greece. The author touches upon the question of Europe and how it relates to nation building in the region superficially, conflating Europe with Britain and neglecting to discuss what is 'Europe' or a 'European' viewpoint and how British views related to it in the late nineteenth century, if they did. This is the only weakness of an otherwise interesting and thoughtful research monograph.
Nationalism and the Lost Homeland: The Case of Greece
Nations and Nationalism, 2021
As evidenced by the radical changes to state organisation, legitimacy and the international order in the past couple of centuries with the development of nationalist ideology, nationalism inherently carries a spatial dimension that translates into an assertion for control of land. This way, it transforms the land to an ancestral national homeland rightfully belonging to 'the nation'. But what if that land was lost to another nation? Embarking from Anthony Smith's ethno-symbolist approach on the construction of national homelands , this article will attempt a theoretical approach on the construction of the lost national homelands. These are usually cases where military defeats led to mass expulsions of populations from their ancestral lands, while nationalist ideologies appropriated them as lost national homelands. The main argument is that the idea of the lost homelands has turned into a symbol of these nationalist ideologies and a constituent element of the respective national identities. Drawing from Greek perceptions of their lost homelands, this article will explore the mechanisms of the nat-ionalisation of space process that elaborated the nat-ionalisation of those homelands even after they became 'lost' for the Greek nation. This article contributes to the studies of the spatial dimensions of national identities, the