Ethnizität und Territorialität. Zur sozialen Konstruktion von Differenz in Mittel- und Osteuropa
Ethnicity and Territoriality. On the Social Construction of Difference in Central and Eastern Europe

Summary/Abstract: Beginning with the fact that the social organisation of the Central and Eastern European nation-states was inspired both by the French and the German model, the article analyses the relationship between ethnicity and territoriality in this part of Europe. It is precisely in this region where – until the present day – the significance of the monoethnic territory for the construction of the “nation” as an “imagined community” has again and again been emphasized. According to this concept, ethnicity cannot be separated from territoriality in this part of Europe. The relevance of “territorial discourses” in Central and Eastern Europe can be interpreted on the basis of two different patterns. The ethnohistorical argument, on the one hand, is based on the assumption that the “nation” has been constructed with the help of agrarian images and values which emphasize the “sacredness” of the “peasant’s soil”; in a metaphorical way, the territory of the nation-state is elevated as the “soil of the nation”. The geo-political argument, on the other hand, departs from the observation that the (pre)national states in Central and Eastern Europe were characterised by markedly “variable geometrics”. This produced a collective quest for “safe”, i.e., unchangeable boundaries and for a stable territory of the “state-nation”, a quest that was strongly supported by the elites. Agrarianist constructions combined with ideas of spatial stability appear to have eminently influenced the juncture between ethnic identity and territoriality.

• Details
• Contents