IN THE MIRROR OF OCCIDENT: The Idea of Europe in the Interwar Albanian Intellectual Discourse
IN THE MIRROR OF OCCIDENT: The Idea of Europe in the Interwar Albanian Intellectual Discourses

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates the ways “Europeanization” was perceived by the intellectual elite in Albania during the processes of nation-building in 1920s-1930s. This historical period was a crucial one in terms of the modernization efforts of Albanian society and serves as a mirror for the post-Communist “Europeanization” processes, within the framework of economic and cultural globalization trends. The period saw the development of state nationalism aiming to spread the national consciousness and to integrate the “peripheries” to the national core. Undertaking the building of a modern, literate and secular society, the political and intellectual elites in Albania looked to the Occident/Europe for suitable guidelines and models of nation-building and also for legitimization and acceptance in the “civilized world”. In this article attention will be paid to the public debates and the use of concept of the Occident/Europe by intellectuals, who advanced different political alternatives about the direction that the modernization of Albania should follow.

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