Series:CAS Sofia Working Papers

The ’Holy’ Territories of the European South-East: The Kosovo Case

The ’Holy’ Territories of the European South-East: The Kosovo Case

Author(s): Blagovest Zlatanov / Language(s): English

Keywords: Balkans Culture; Balkan as Region; Balkans Identity; Kosova;

It has already become a truism among some cultural historians that the crucial and foundational identificational symbols and narratives of the South- East Slavic nations – the Serbian and Bulgarian1 nations, for example – function as recent-time, compensating imaginary constructs. Yet, they have been conceived in the last two centuries and are still postulated as ancient “natural” attributes of the “real” ethnic past, which could be or should be used as an ultimate ground of personal and group self-identification. Such is the case with some recent historical studies, centered on the foundational ethyological myth of the Serbian nation – the myth of the Kosovo plain (Kosovo polje) – which dare to oppose the predominant Serbian historical narratives. I would not claim that some new or intentionally concealed data-discoveries prove that the existing Serbian story about Kosovo is not “scientifically true”. In fact, in the last 20 years, when the “Kosovo problem” has turned out to be again a focal point of Balkan and European historical development, there have been no new findings concerning it. Moreover, different researchers are digging into roughly the same compendium of textual and ethnographic sources while building their conclusions. Apparently, the reasons for the completely contradictory resulting statements about and assessments of the historical role of Kosovo could be sought anywhere but in the so-called “sources” and “proofs”. In this sense, I would not share the opinion that at the onset of the 21st century we are still able to believe in and disclose some solid and autonomous “reality” lying beyond the “Kosovo myth”, whereby we could defend our stories and self-projections as reasonable and well-grounded. The main objective of my paper is rather different. I am not going to discuss the relation between the “Kosovo myth” and “historical reality”, or the discrepancy between the fi ctionality of the former and the truthfulness of the latter. I am not going to demystify the deceptiveness of the national phantasm “Kosovo”, and thus argue for the impeccability of some reality over there. In the last years so many people have indulged in confronting the shamefulness and anachronicity of the “Kosovo myth” that it seems as if the contemporary world is saturated by the self-evidence and predominance of advanced and civilized rationality, which brings us to the invincible principles of happiness and justice. On the contrary, I believe in the mytho-genesis of most of the contemporary political and historical establishment. Yet, it is not my goal to prove this here. What I am rather interested in are such simple questions as how people are attached to space, what is their relation to the territory, what it is that they call “Kosovo” for example, why they are so eager to envisage some strip of land as their own “possession”, “homeland”, “source of identifi cation” and so on. [...]

Tsarigrad/Istanbul and the Spatial Construction of Bulgarian National Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Tsarigrad/Istanbul and the Spatial Construction of Bulgarian National Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Author(s): Boyko Penchev / Language(s): English

Keywords: Bulgarian Nation-Building;

The point of departure of the following paper is the question how and why Istanbul, or Tsarigrad, as Bulgarians used to call the capital of Ottoman Turkey in 19th century and later, has been inscribed in different spatial frameworks during the second half of 19th century. My interest is how representations of big cities, i.e. Tsarigrad/Istanbul, participate in the construction of a unifi ed national identity or, to put it another way, how the multiethnic city of convergent cultures has been appropriated in the imaginary geography of the diverging culture of nationalism.

The Science of History in Bulgaria in the Age of Socialism: the Problematic Mapping of its Institutional Boundaries

The Science of History in Bulgaria in the Age of Socialism: the Problematic Mapping of its Institutional Boundaries

Author(s): Ivan Elenkov / Language(s): English

Before the communist takeover of power on 9 September 1944, scientifi c research and training in history were concentrated in Sofi a University’s degree program in History. Once in power, the Bulgarian communists imposed radical changes in the system and structure of producing knowledge about the past. With increasing student enrollments, especially following the introduction of part-time degree program in 1949, by the late 1940s Sofi a University’s Faculty of History and Philology had become a “hothouse of teacher cadres.”1 In 1951 the degree program in History was separated from the “philologies.” A new Faculty of Philosophy and History – with degree courses in philosophy, history and pedagogy – was established. Following the Soviet attempt to separate scientifi c research from university teaching, the leading role in historical research shifted from Sofi a University to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS).2 A new law on the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, adopted on 11 February 1947, allowed the BAS’s Executive Council to create only a month later an Institute for Bulgarian History at the Academy’s branch for History and Philology.[...]

Space, Memory and Identity: The Memory of the Asia Minor Space in Greek Novels of the 1960s

Space, Memory and Identity: The Memory of the Asia Minor Space in Greek Novels of the 1960s

Author(s): Maria Nikoloupoulou / Language(s): English

Keywords: so-called »Population-Exchange«; Greek Emigration from Turkey;

One of the milestones of 20th century Greek national narrative is the Asia Minor Catastrophe, i.e. the defeat of the Greek Army in the Greek-Turkish war (1919-1922) and the resulting wave of refugees of Greeks from Asia Minor (Rum in Ottoman terms) to the Greek state. The object of this study is to analyse why and how during the forty-year anniversary of this event certain novels appear to commemorate the Asia Minor space and identity: Ματωμένα Χώματα [Bloodied Earth, transl. as Farewell Anatolia] by Dido Soteriou (1909-2004); Στου Χατζηφράγκου [Stou Hatzifrangou, In the Hatzifrangou Quarter] by Kosmas Politis (1888-1974); To Αϊβαλί, η πατρίδα μου [Aivali, My Homeland] by Fotis Kondoglou, all published in 1962; and Λωξάνδρα [Loxandra] by Maria Iordanidou (1897-1989), published in 1963. While literature, the novel and especially the novel with historical subject matter, has traditionally been connected to the discourse of nationalism (Brennan 48-49, 52), these texts challenge offi cial nationalistic discourses by commemorating a pre-modern space, which was destroyed by nationalism, and by exploring refugee identity. [...]

Contesting the Old Order: Greek Orthodox and Muslims in Izmir welcome the Ottoman Constitutional Revolution

Contesting the Old Order: Greek Orthodox and Muslims in Izmir welcome the Ottoman Constitutional Revolution

Author(s): Vangelis Kechriotis / Language(s): English

Keywords: Young Turks; Abdulhamid II;

In 1908, after thirty three years of autocratic rule and following the successful course of the Revolution organized by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti), which was set up by dissident young officers and bureaucrats better known as Young Turks, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II was urged to restore the Constitution that he had suspended in 1878. The news triggered enthusiasm among all communities, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and preparations for the parliamentary elections soon began. As a matter of fact, this period entailed a totally new experience in the way Ottoman subjects, particularly in the urban centers, contemplated their relations with the authorities, in the sense that decision-making and mobilisation of populations took place mainly in the major urban centers, Izmir, Salonica and the capital Istanbul. Thus, to begin with, our interest revolves around the urban space and the ways the urban population perceived and responded to the new challenges. In this paper, our aim is to address some of the questions generated by our study of the Greek-Orthodox community in a major urban center like Izmir (Smyrna). To what extent, for instance, did the urban experience of an ethno-religious community in a particular city of the Empire bear the marks of its specifi c geographical coordinates? Moeoer, to what extent was this experience determined by the ethno-religious background of its population? To what extent, fi nally, can this experience be comprehensible to outsiders? [...]

The Small Enterpreneur: Culture and Economic Action

The Small Enterpreneur: Culture and Economic Action

Author(s): Tanya Chavdarova / Language(s): English

This paper is concerned with cultural differences and how they affect the process of doing business by a specific economic agent: the sole proprietor who operates in the capital cities of Bulgaria and Macedonia. The analysis is based on the empirical results of surveys that are representative of the sole proprietors in Sofi a and Skopje. The sole proprietor is defined here as a physical owner and is represented by the social category self-employed or employer of few wage or non-paid family workers; i.e. the legal term sole proprietor corresponds to the social term small entrepreneur. The legal term is preferred for the purposes of the cross-national empirical survey because the sole proprietor exists as a category in the Trade Law of both countries and has the same social defi nition. It is covered by the national statistics and this fact has permitted us to draw consistent samples in Sofi a and Skopje.

In Quest of Balkan Occidentalism

In Quest of Balkan Occidentalism

Author(s): Diana Mishkova / Language(s): English

The article seeks to revise the current mainstream interpretation of the relations between the Balkans and the West as it has emerged from the mirror reading of the Balkanism paradigm. It interrogates the grounds for interpreting the Western discourse about the Balkans in terms of Said’s Orientalism and the Balkan visions of Europe in terms of the hegemonic Western discourse.

On ‘Us’ as ‘Them’: Understanding the Historical Bases and Political Uses of Popular Narratives on Serbian Disunity

On ‘Us’ as ‘Them’: Understanding the Historical Bases and Political Uses of Popular Narratives on Serbian Disunity

Author(s): Slobodan Naumović / Language(s): English

This paper starts from the assumption that the European future of Balkan/South East European countries depends to a significant extent on the self-perceptions and expectations of the local populations, as well as on the identities that they are yet to imagine and construct. The proper understanding of, and adequate response to, popular self-perceptions, perceptions of encompassing social realities, and expectations are held here to be vital preconditions for sustainable political development in each of the countries that constitute the region, as well as for their prospects for EU Accession. As Pierre Bourdieu would say, political action is possible because actors who are a part of the social world possess knowledge of that world, and because one can act upon the social world by infl uencing the actors’ knowledge of it. However, in order to control and change an actor’s knowledge of the world, one fi rst has to invest some effort in understanding it. This paper focuses on one particular thread in the tightly knit web of popular Serbian self-perceptions, that is, the set of narratives on Serbian disunity, disaccord and resulting splits. The paper will offer an examination of their socio-political bases, modes of functioning, as well as of consequences of their political instrumentalisation. Disunity and disaccord have acquired in the Serbian popular imaginary a notorious, quasi-demiurgic status. They are often perceived as being the chief malefactors in Serbian history, causing political or military defeats, and threatening to tear Serbian society completely apart. Out of that reason, the complex set of deep-rooted self-perceptions and self-descriptions occupies a privileged place amongst what the anthropologist Marko Živković, paraphrasing Clifford Geertz, has termed as “stories Serbs tell themselves and others about themselves”, or what, addressing a different context, Nancy Ries has named “the world of Russian talk. [...]

Staging the Balkans. Balkan Presentations at the World’s Columbian Exposition

Staging the Balkans. Balkan Presentations at the World’s Columbian Exposition

Author(s): Todor Hristov / Language(s): English

The main objective of the research paper is to develop an analytical theory of identity, which in turn would make possible the study of identity on a textual level. Another objective is to show that Balkan identity is traumatic and current research on the topic does no more than perpetuate this trauma. And fi nally, drawing on the analytical theory of identity developed in the fi rst part of the study, the paper embarks on describing the identity games played by various actors involved in the Balkan presentations at the Chicago 1893 World’s Exposition. The current abridged version of the paper has only the humble goal of presenting the theoretical framework of the study and its general fi ndings. The presentation will go along the following lines: (1) I will try to describe the settings of the Chicago 1893 World Columbian Exhibition (which will be my object of study); (2) I will try to explain how we can study identity in the case of World Expositions; (3) I will try to give an account of the visual presentation of Bulgarian identity at the Chicago World Fair.

The Nationalization of Philosophy: Constructing a Bulgarian »National Ontology« in the Interwar Period

The Nationalization of Philosophy: Constructing a Bulgarian »National Ontology« in the Interwar Period

Author(s): Balázs Trencsényi / Language(s): English

The key problem of most of the social and political thought that emerged in Bulgaria from the late-nineteenth century up to the establishment of the post-WW II communist regime was the constantly evoked “paradox of development.” While civilizational advancement was the overall aim of the nation- building project,2 it also meant social differentiation, the collapse of the traditional life-world of the peasantry and of the entrepreneurial layer that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century using the economic structures of the Ottoman Empire. This posed a series of dilemmas concerning the identity of the community. On the one hand, modernization implied a growing distance between the emerging “nationalized” middle-class and the rural population; it also raised the question of how to transmit this “national” culture to the masses. On the other hand, it meant the relativizing of traditional role-models, threatening the newly-formed nation-state with apparent chaos caused by the permanent dislocation of the principal actors, leading to “misunderstood” forms and veritable mutations of the Western civilizational framework. [...]

Price and Prejudice. Bulgarian Cases of Clothing and Identity

Price and Prejudice. Bulgarian Cases of Clothing and Identity

Author(s): Ilia Iliev / Language(s): English

Keywords: second hand textile market;

The massive use of second-hand clothes is one of the many innovations practiced by Bulgarian consumers over the last decade. The first shops for secondhand clothes, mostly of West European origin, appeared immediately after the fall of the socialist regime in 1989. At the beginning, they were located in back streets, backyards, modest spaces, and the information about them circulated among informal consumer networks. Slowly, the shops gained in profitability and respectability, and ten years later we find them in central streets, the heart of the towns, under neon shop-signs announcing their existence with a specific modest dignity or humor. Buying and using second-hand clothes to such an extent is a relatively new phenomenon in Bulgaria and it has encountered specific obstacles, related to local tradition. For many Bulgarians, using clothes previously belonging to another implied either a close personal relationship to the prior owner or lower social standing, with a variety of shades between these positions. At least at the beginning, buying and wearing second-hand clothes was far from an anonymous, impersonal transaction. It involved intense work of symbolic appropriation and quite often, it led to refl ection on the relationship between old and new owner. Almost inevitably, this led to analysis of the imagined West Europeans who used to don these clothes and the new Bulgarian owners, similarities and dissimilarities between them, and the symbolic links between Bulgarian customers and their imagined Western counterparts.

Aegean Macedonians and the Bulgarian Identity Politics

Aegean Macedonians and the Bulgarian Identity Politics

Author(s): Tchavdar Marinov / Language(s): English

Keywords: Greek Civil War;

Based on archival research, this paper is part of a larger study focusing on the migration into Bulgaria of Slav-speaking refugees from the Greek Civil War. The study analyzes the measures taken by the Bulgarian Communist Party and state leadership to homogenize this new Macedonian diaspora. The members of this refugee community are labeled for the most part “Aegean Macedonians”. This designation seems to be the most common selfidentifi cation of Slav-speaking political emigrants originating from Greek or Aegean Macedonia1, who otherwise share diverse national identities – “Macedonians”, “Greeks” or “Bulgarians”. This study offers an analytical approach to the problem of national identity in relation to political activism and refugee experience. It also provides an overview of competing identity politics – those of communist Bulgaria, of the Greek Communist Party and of Tito’s Yugoslavia, and analyzes their function in the construction of the national identity of refugees and their identity as refugees. Parallel research on Macedonian diaspora communities from Aegean/Greek Macedonia that reside in Australia, Canada and elsewhere, will document the birth of a transnational political activism. Even today, this activism demands recognition of collective minority rights and infl uences the identity formation of former refugees from Greece in other parts of the world. In this way, this paper sheds light on the complex development of Macedonian nationalism outside the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, though in a direct or indirect relation with it. The paper is also based on a study completed on Aegean Macedonians residing mostly in the Republic of Macedonia, who were participants in the Third meeting of child-refugees (Florina, 2003). I compare the study to similar narratives of Slav-speaking “Greek political emigrants” residing in Bulgaria.

Nation between Tragedy and Idyll

Nation between Tragedy and Idyll

Author(s): Boyan Manchev / Language(s): English

Keywords: nature vs. culture;

This essay analyses how national ideologies use the basic opposition of modernity, i.e., the opposition between nature and culture. I will discuss two main modes of usage: the tragic and idyllic. The aim of the paper is to shed light on their structural dimensions and their complex double bind, which exemplifi es the structural nexus of modernity.

Balkan History: No Longer European, Not Only Ottoman, and Not Yet National - A Case Study on the Historical Novel

Balkan History: No Longer European, Not Only Ottoman, and Not Yet National - A Case Study on the Historical Novel

Author(s): Albena Hranova / Language(s): English

Keywords: Ivo Andric;Dimitar Talev;Dobrica Cosic;Nikos Kazandzakis;Anton Donchev;

In the final chapter of Imagining the Balkans (1997), while advancing arguments on the concept of the Balkans as an Ottoman legacy, Maria Todorova writes: “Turning to the Ottoman legacy as perception, it has been and is being shaped by generations of historians, poets, writers, journalists and other intellectuals.” In the Bulgarian edition (1999), Todorova adds a paragraph with names of writers to which she was referring – Ivo Andric, Dimitar Talev, Dobrica Cosic, Nikos Kazandzakis, and Anton Donchev. Especially the Bulgarian figures lead us to the role of the historical novel in shaping this legacy. [...]

How to be Karakachan in Bulgaria?

How to be Karakachan in Bulgaria?

Author(s): Aleksey Kalyonski / Language(s): English

This text will focus on the identity of the Karakachans in Bulgaria – a former nomadic community forced to settle down at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s of the last century. The Karakachans are Orthodox Christians and speak a specific Greek dialect. That, together with their former way of life and cultural tradition, makes them different from both Greeks and Bulgarians. This particular group gives a unique opportunity to outline the constant mental mapping and re-mapping carried out under specifi c national and transborder circumstances. The Karakachan case is, in a way, comparable to the “ethnic revivals” or “re appearances” of other small Balkan ethnic groups on the social, economic and political scene of the changing region1 Nowadays the small ethnic (local, ethno-confessional) groups (Karakachans, Gagauz, Gorani, Yuruks, Armenians and others) are not at the centre of the most severe Balkan confl icts. Some of them, the Vlachs/Aromanians, for example, have occasionally been in the focus of international contradictions; however, the gradual social integration, assimilation and emigration have reduced them in number and importance during and after the clashes of the “big” nationalisms. The very survival of some of the small Balkan ethnicities in the near decades is under question. Given the fact that both many of the Bulgarian Karakachans and quite a few authors share this view, the presentday situation proves to be much more complex and controversial. [...]

Autochthonism and National Ethnology in Romania

Autochthonism and National Ethnology in Romania

Author(s): Vintilă Mihăilescu / Language(s): English

Keywords: National Anthropology;

What are we referring to when we speak about the history of Romanian ethnology or anthropology? It seems easy, even obvious, but the very field(s) of what we are referring to by these academic labels do not just exist “out there” waiting to be approached and understood. As a matter of fact, „ethnology” was a term used only incidentally in Romanian professional jargon before 1990, whereas the term „anthropology” found use alone in the field of physical anthropology. What is more: beyond the institutional borders (which took time to emerge and achieve legitimacy), one might question where the limits of „ethnological thinking” lie in the broad context of the social thinking of early modern times, where the involved elites shared an interest in „the being of the people” and most approaches were conceived as „national sciences”? Contrary to what one might think, there is not an easy and ready-made answer to this question. Let us then ask what we should refer to when we speak about the history of Romanian ethnology? We might begin with the classical couple of folklore studies and ethnography, which both have a long and rich tradition in Romanian modern culture. The next step would be to link them in a mutually comprehensive approach, despite the general practice of presenting them independently in specifi c histories. In doing so, we could adopt the recommendation of an international conference of European “folk ethnographers” held in 1955 in Arnhem to use the general term of “national ethnology” when referring to all kinds of scholars of “folk culture” within a national realm (see Tamás, 1968). But to frame the question in this fashion would be misleading to some extent. Folk studies and ethnography transcend the “academic” realm in their claim to have the last word on “the being of the people”, as Pârvan explicitly states when defi ning ethnography. Folkloric species and categories, as defi ned by the different schools and approaches, have as their only common point “their documentary value, all the goods of the fi eld [of folk studies, n.n.] being documents of popular mentality” (Bîrlea, 1969:7). Thus, the two disciplines share, in fact, their object of interest; but in doing so, they also share it with many other disciplines and approaches. Indeed, “the being of the people” is a general concern of the national elites during this entire period, most of them contributing in a more or less specialized way to its investigation. [...]

From “Save the Children” to “Save the Tribe”. Child Care in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria 1919–1939

From “Save the Children” to “Save the Tribe”. Child Care in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria 1919–1939

Author(s): Kristina Popova / Language(s): English

During the process of modernization, important social projects focused on youth and children. Child mortality and morbidity rates, social care for certain groups of children and public control of youth were discussed by professionals, social activists and state employees. Special societies and institutions were established to organize youth. Child care focusing on poor children and orphans underwent important changes. Through the efforts of different expert groups, including doctors, teachers, jurists and municipal officers, and based on public knowledge of modern health, food and lodging standards, new groups of children became targets of social care and support. These groups included undernourished children, children brought up with inadequate health practices, and children threatened by tuberculosis or abuse. [...]

Tracing Back the Bulgarian Clerk: Public Images of the Profession (Late 19th – early 20th centuries)

Tracing Back the Bulgarian Clerk: Public Images of the Profession (Late 19th – early 20th centuries)

Author(s): Galina Goncharova / Language(s): English

The traditional sociological notion of the role combines the presumption of rationality with the metaphor of theatrical performance. On the one hand, the role notion presupposes typization and instrumentality, or setting up and upholding certain normative prescriptions. On the other hand, it refers to a situation of communication and representation – assessment and orientation of your own acts in accordance with the “presence” of the others’ roles – that comes to the fore. As two ultimate explications of these two characteristics we can treat the ideal model of Webber of bureaucracy and the interactive symbolism of Goffman; and as an attempt to bridge them together we can view the definition of Berger and Luckmann.

Domestication of the Market? Householding and Post-Peasant Society in Romania

Domestication of the Market? Householding and Post-Peasant Society in Romania

Author(s): Vintilă Mihăilescu / Language(s): English

Recent accession to the European Union means a speedy and dramatic shift in economic culture and practices toward a common market economy and behavior. How will Romania, with about half of its population leaving in villages and about one third of its active population involved in agriculture f t into this emerging post-peasant society? What will be the main tensions and the short term adjustments of this emerging social context? Without aiming to advocate for one scenario or another, the present essay intends to explore the role households and household centered economy actually play and will play in this context.

Neither “East” nor “West”: The Past and Present Life of Yugoslav Identity

Neither “East” nor “West”: The Past and Present Life of Yugoslav Identity

Author(s): Zala Volčič / Language(s): English

Keywords: Serbia between East and West;

The above research explores questions about the ways in which group identities are formed, and the functions that they serve. It simultaneously recognizes that it is not just the legal statutes, but also the every-day practices to which they are attached, that define identities of any community. It is this array of cultural and symbolic resources that I am interested in developing further in my article. I focus here on how and which generational (and class) distinctions are understood, negotiated and put to work by actors themselves. Through in-depth interviews with young Slovenian and Macedonian intellectuals from the last Yugoslav generation I explore the perception of Yugoslav identities and I argue for its understanding as a hybrid. I suggest that understanding it as a hybrid helps to unveil the complexities of social reality, its diverse and multiple dimensions, the overcoming of traditional/modern/postmodern models, and at the same time, it resists the boundaries and dichotomies (neither/nor).