Balkan Heritages

This volume deals with the relation between heritage, history and politics in the Balkans. Contributions examine diverse ways in which material and immaterial heritage has been articulated, negotiated and manipulated since the nineteenth century. The major question addressed here is how modern Balkan nations have voiced claims about their past by establishing ’proof’ of a long historical presence on their territories in order to legitimise national political narratives. Focusing on claims constructed in relation to tangible evidence of past presence, especially architecture and townscape, the contributors reveal the rich relations between material and immaterial conceptions of heritage. This comparative take on Balkan public uses of the past also reveals many common trends in social and political practices, ideas and fixations embedded in public and collective memories. Balkan Heritages revisits some general truths about the Balkans as a region and a category, in scholarship and in politics. Contributions to the volume adopt a transnational and trans-disciplinary perspective of Balkan identities and heritage(s), viewed here as symbolic resources deployed by diverse local actors with special emphasis on scholars and political leaders.

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.

Public space and performativity from the perspective of architecture In recent decades, architecture has been seen as a field of practice that contributes greatly to the performativity of public space. In spite of the explosion of virtual communities through social media and the limitations imposed by pandemics, architecture today still holds an active role in (literally) building our societies. Bearing in mind its acute politicisation in past years, Living Politics in the City looks at public space from the perspective of architecture and its effective contribution, not as a prop but as an actual catalyst for embodying politics. The essays gathered here span five continents, activating various disciplinary approaches to architecture and examining it in different contexts: from a Palestinian refugee camp to the most vibrant urban axis in Sao Paolo, from the numerous city squares around the world crowded with rebellious populations, to the proximal politics of housing in Australia. Contributors: Endriana Audisho (University of Technology Sydney), Maja Babic (Charles University ), Alexandra Biehler (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Marseille), Tracey Bowen (University of Toronto Mississauga), Etienne Delprat (Rennes 2 University), Claudia Faraone (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Caterina Frisone (Oxford Brookes University), Catherine Grout (ENSAPL Lille), Pavel Kunysz (University of Liège), Flavia Marcello (Swinburne University of Technology), Eric Le Coguiec (University of Liège), Tova Lubinsky (University of Technology Sydney), Giovanna Muzzi (IUAV Venice School of Architecture, ETICity), Can Onaner (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Shadi Saleh (KU Leuven), Frédéric Sotinel (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne), Karolina Wilczynska (Adam Mickiewicz University), Ian Woodcock (Swinburne University of Technology) This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

The essays in this volume address theoretical and methodological issues of Balkan or Southeast European regional studies—questions of scholarly concepts, definitions, and approaches but also the extra-scholarly, ideological, political, and geopolitical motivations that underpin them.

In a period when the study of archaeological remains is enriched through new methods derived from the natural sciences and when there is general agreement on the need for more investment in the study, restoration and conservation of the tangible cultural heritage, this book presents contributions to these fields from South-Eastern Europe.

We often think of the Balkans as a region beset by turmoil and backwardness, but from late antiquity to the present it has been a dynamic meeting place of cultures and religions. Marie-Janine Calic invites us to reconsider the history of this intriguing, diverse region as essential to the story of global Europe.