Balkanization And Global Politics

Balkanization (territorial fragmentation) is becoming a significant urban and geopolitical pursuit in contemporary times. Countries, cities and regions are ever increasingly voicing the desire for independence and balkanization from the nation or union they are a part of. This monograph generally maps the historical and theoretical emergence of balkanization, as well its more recent spread into fields as far ranging as law, medicine, data and security studies, sociology, architecture and the urban. The spatialization of balkanization is particularly addressed in terms of destruction and renewal through a detailed sociopolitical interrogation of architecture and the urban, including their changing symbolic, ideological and functional forms. The spatial connections between balkanization, violent remaking (destruction and renewal) and global politics have predominantly been analyzed via the former Yugoslav context and the Balkans, however, spotlight has also been directed to the current political climate of the UK, Australia and the Anglo-Saxon geopolitics. The analysis helps in understanding broader emergent patterns of sociospatial polarization across various scales, and in respect to global geoeconomic and geopolitical restructuring. This is particularly important because drawing connections between balkanization, economics, law, media and technology is to gain an awareness of - and engagement with - the emerging implications of spatial remaking and global politics. This monograph is a valuable resource and will be relevant to academics and students interested in spatial politics; including architecture, urbanism, geography, sociology, politics, international development, conflict, and cultural studies.

Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! is the first book written from the radical left perspective on the topic of Yugoslav space after the dismantling of the country. In this collection of essays, commentaries, and interviews, written between 2002 and 2010, Andrej Grubačić speaks about the politics of balkanization—about the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, neoliberal structural adjustment, humanitarian intervention, supervised independence of Kosovo, occupation of Bosnia, and other episodes of Power which he situates in the long historical context of colonialism, conquest, and intervention. But he also tells the story of the balkanization of politics, of the Balkans seen from below. A space of bogumils—those medieval heretics who fought against Crusades and churches—and a place of anti-Ottoman resistance; a home to hajduks and klefti, pirates and rebels; a refuge of feminists and socialists, of antifascists and partisans; of new social movements of occupied and recovered factories; a place of dreamers of all sorts struggling both against provincial “peninsularity” as well as against occupations, foreign interventions and that process which is now, in a strange inversion of history, often described by that fashionable term, “balkanization.” For Grubačić, political activist and radical sociologist, Yugoslavia was never just a country—it was an idea. Like the Balkans itself, it was a project of inter-ethnic co-existence, a trans-ethnic and pluricultural space of many diverse worlds. Political ideas of inter-ethnic cooperation and mutual aid as we had known them in Yugoslavia were destroyed by the beginning of the 1990s—disappeared in the combined madness of ethno-nationalist hysteria and humanitarian imperialism. This remarkable collection chronicles political experiences of the author who is himself a Yugoslav, a man without a country; but also, as an anarchist, a man without a state. This book is an important reading for those on the Left who are struggling to understand the intertwined legacy of inter-ethnic conflict and inter-ethnic solidarity in contemporary, post-Yugoslav history.

Reinvestigates realism in the context of international relations through a dialogue between classical international theory and critical theoretical challenges to it. Essays in international theory are combined with writings in critical and postructuralist theories of international relations.

"Balkanization" is a modern term describing the fragmentation and re-division of countries and nations in the Balkan Peninsula, as well as a dynamic meaning "the Balkan way of doing things." The Roots of Balkanization describes the historical changes that took place in the Balkan Peninsula after the collapse of the Roman Empire and their impact in Eastern lands. It develops conclusions reached in the author's previous book, Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe, covering 500 B.C.-A.D. 500. Balkan multi-ethnicity was formed after the fifth century, when barbarian invaders settled and violently mixed with the native ancient nations. By the use of sword and terror, warlords became kings and their confederations of tribes became state nations. New societies emerged under the blessing of the Orthodox Church, only to fight against each other over disputed land that eventually came to be occupied by other invaders. The involvement of western powers and the Ottoman expansion triggered more grievances and violence, culminating with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the end of the Byzantine Empire. The medieval culture of the Balkans survived and continues to play a major role in how business and political life is conducted today in Eastern Europe. Book jacket.

Examining two centuries of Balkan politics, from the emergence of nationalism to the retreat of Communist power in 1989, this is the first book to systematically argue that many of the region's problems are external in origin. A decade of instability in the Balkan states of southeast Europe has given the region one of the worst images in world politics. The Balkans has become synonymous with chaos and extremism. Balkanization, meaning conflict arising from the fragmentation of political power, is a condition feared across the globe. This new text assesses the key issues of Balkan politics, showing how the development of exclusive nationalism has prevented the region’s human and material resources from being harnessed in a constructive way. It argues that the proximity of the Balkans to the great powers is the main reason for instability and decline. Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and finally the USA had conflicting ambitions and interests in the region. Russia had imperial designs before and after the 1917 Revolution. The Western powers sometimes tolerated these or encouraged undemocratic local forces to exercise control in order to block further Soviet expansion. Leading authority Tom Gallagher examines the origins of these Western prejudices towards the Balkans, tracing the damaging effects of policies based on Western lethargy and cynicism, and reassesses the negative image of the region, its citizens, their leadership skills and their potential to overcome crucial problems.

Liridona Veliu examines ‘balkanization’ as a long-standing discourse of identity construction, otherness and stereotyping through Twitter. Although deriving from the Balkans and attached to the Balkan Peninsula, the ‘balkanization’ discourse has gained a life of its own. The author challenges its current manifestations shaped by the era of social media and identifies and connects its meanings with deeper processes of historical events. This book denaturalizes ‘balkanization’ as a constructed source of knowledge, approaching the topic embedded in genealogy and deconstructivism, and applies critical discourse analysis as a method of research.

Maria Todorova puts in conversation several fields that have been traditionally treated as discrete: Balkans, Eastern Europe, Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires. Applying different perspectives and different methodological approaches, it insists on the heuristic value of scales

"If the Balkans hadn't existed, they would have been invented" was the verdict of Count Hermann Keyserling in his famous 1928 publication, Europe. Over ten years ago, Maria Todorova traced the relationship between the reality and the invention. Based on a rich selection of travelogues, diplomatic accounts, academic surveys, journalism, and belles-lettres in many languages, Imagining the Balkans explored the ontology of the Balkans from the sixteenth century to the present day, uncovering the ways in which an insidious intellectual tradition was constructed, became mythologized, and is still being transmitted as discourse. Maria Todorova, who was raised in the Balkans, is in a unique position to bring both scholarship and sympathy to her subject, and in a new afterword she reflects on recent developments in the study of the Balkans and political developments on the ground since the publication of Imagining the Balkans. The afterword explores the controversy over Todorova's coining of the term Balkanism. With this work, Todorova offers a timely, updated, accessible study of how an innocent geographic appellation was transformed into one of the most powerful and widespread pejorative designations in modern history.