The Unwanted Europeanness

Can we be optimistic about the future of Europe? To what extent has the European integrationist project affected the discourse about the core and the (semi-)periphery? Why does the European Union struggle with its own, and the neighbouring, Other? These are some of the questions addressed in this thought-provoking volume about the dilemmas surrounding the ever-uncertain European unity. A wide range of contributors have drawn upon invaluable sources and data to examine a broad selection of official discords and discrepancies characterizing the EU’s relations with the Balkans, East-Central Europe, and beyond. Moreover, past events have shaped present political and socioeconomic cooperation (or its deficiencies), with no reason to believe that these present challenges will not further influence future arrangements at a supranational or intergovernmental level. Whichever the period, questions of belonging, solidarity, and the (un)wanted Other have remained relevant and have continued to penetrate discussions. In addition to complementing the existing analyses of European developments, the present findings are of great relevance for researchers, policymakers, and general readership. In fact, they are essential if we want to see Europe develop.

In this book, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Katja Mäkinen, Viktorija L. A. Čeginskas, and Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus scrutinize how people who participate in cultural initiatives funded and governed by the European Union understand the idea of Europe. The book focuses on three cultural initiatives: the European Capital of Culture, the European Heritage Label, and a European Citizen Campus project funded through the Creative Europe programme. These initiatives are examined through field studies conducted in 12 countries between 2010 and 2018. The authors describe their approach as ‘ethnography of Europeanization’ and conceptualize the attempts at Europeanization in the European Union’s cultural policy as politics of belonging.

This book is aimed at presenting fresh views, interpretations, and reinterpretations of some already researched issues relating to the Yugoslav foreign policy and international relations up to year 1991. Yugoslavia positioned itself as a communist state that was not under the heel of the Soviet diplomacy and policy and as such was perceived by the West as an acceptable partner and useful tool in counteracting the Soviet influence.

This book provides a timely comparative analysis on the foreign policy of eleven great powers, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s war against the West and the global competition reshaping the world order.

Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries: Redefining Progressiveness, Coloniality and Transition Efforts is a timely contribution to the project of theorizing "Europe" through decolonial perspectives on the Left, as the European and global crisis has prompted new reflections on what it means to sit still at the European "peripheries". The book explores how the joint scholarship efforts of postcolonial and postsocialist scholars might come up with better-grounded and more detailed theoretical and methodological insights into the process of globalization, and subsequent peripheralization, if framed under a progressive and leftist perspective. The authors, many from the South-East Europe region, use a variety of analytical lenses to demonstrate how the nexus of postcolonial, postsocialist area studies and progressive developmental political thought could inspire changes in the future which are in dissonance with neoliberal and neoconservative capitalism. As the side effects of global capitalism continue to accelerate, scholars and activists in the postsocialist periphery are increasingly turning to the concept of decoloniality in the hope it might offer more options on how to begin to build up their framework. This book offers numerous examples of how decolonial theory can be applied to activist work in the fight against austerity and neo-liberalization, as well as examples of how decolonial critique can be mobilized to contest processes of Europeanization and Euro-Atlantic integration. This book will intrigue students and scholars of critical social scholarship in general, postsocialism, postcolonialism, critiques of right populism and the rise of white nationalism in Europe, as well as those studying the regions of South-Eastern Europe and Eurasia more generally. It will also interest activists, organizers, decision-makers, policy analysts, and leftists, both in the region and internationally.

The story of the recent uprisings that sought to change the world - and what comes next From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for? From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. He draws on four years of research and hundreds of interviews conducted around the world, as well as his own strange experiences in Brazil, where a progressive-led protest explosion led to an extreme-right government that torched the Amazon. Careful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.

From its roots in revolution and war, Ukraine’s Azov movement has grown from a militia of fringe far-right figures and football hooligans fending off Russian-backed forces into a multipronged social movement that has become the envy of the global far right. In this first English-language book on the Azov movement, Michael Colborne explains how Azov came to be and continues to exploit Ukraine’s fractured social and political situation—including the only ongoing war on European soil – to build one of the most ambitious and dangerous far-right movements in the world.

"Medina Tenour Whiteman stands at the margins of whiteness and Islam. An Anglo-American born to Sufi converts, she feels perennially out of place--not fully at home in Western or Muslim cultures. In this searingly honest memoir, Whiteman contemplates what it means to be an invisible Muslim, examining the pernicious effects of white Muslim privilege and exploring what Muslim identity can mean the world over--in lands of religious diversity and cultural insularity, from Andalusia, Bosnia and Turkey to Zanzibar, India and Iran. Through her travels, she unearths experiences familiar to both Western Muslims and anyone of mixed heritage: a life-long search for belonging and the joys and crises of inhabiting more than one identity."--Dust jacket flap.