Author: Valentin Mihaylov
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040008690
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation’s historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions. The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author’s model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians’ historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of ‘high’ geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing ‘low’ (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology. Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.
Bulgarian Geopolitics in a Balkan Context
Author: Valentin Mihaylov
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040008690
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation’s historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions. The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author’s model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians’ historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of ‘high’ geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing ‘low’ (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology. Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040008690
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation’s historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions. The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author’s model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians’ historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of ‘high’ geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing ‘low’ (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology. Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.
Beyond Balkanism
Author: Diana Mishkova
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351236369
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351236369
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.
Balkan Blues
Author: Yuson Jung
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253036747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Balkan Blues explores how a state transitions from the collectivized production and distribution of socialism to the consumer-focused culture of capitalism. Yuson Jung considers the state as an economic agent in upholding rights and responsibilities in the shift to a global market. Taking Bulgaria as her focus, Jung shows how impoverished Bulgarians developed a consumer-oriented society and how the concept of "need" adapted in surprising ways to accommodate this new culture. Different legal frameworks arose to ensure the rights of vulnerable or deceived consumers. Consumer advocacy NGOs and government officers scrambled to navigate unfamiliar EU-imposed models for consumer affairs departments. All of these changes involved issues of responsibility, accountability, and civic engagement, which brought Bulgarians new ways of viewing both their identities and their sense of agency. Yet these opportunities also raised questions of inequality, injustice, and social stratification. Jung's study provides a compelling argument for reconsidering of the role of the state in the construction of 21st-century consumer cultures.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253036747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Balkan Blues explores how a state transitions from the collectivized production and distribution of socialism to the consumer-focused culture of capitalism. Yuson Jung considers the state as an economic agent in upholding rights and responsibilities in the shift to a global market. Taking Bulgaria as her focus, Jung shows how impoverished Bulgarians developed a consumer-oriented society and how the concept of "need" adapted in surprising ways to accommodate this new culture. Different legal frameworks arose to ensure the rights of vulnerable or deceived consumers. Consumer advocacy NGOs and government officers scrambled to navigate unfamiliar EU-imposed models for consumer affairs departments. All of these changes involved issues of responsibility, accountability, and civic engagement, which brought Bulgarians new ways of viewing both their identities and their sense of agency. Yet these opportunities also raised questions of inequality, injustice, and social stratification. Jung's study provides a compelling argument for reconsidering of the role of the state in the construction of 21st-century consumer cultures.
Popular Geopolitics
Author: Robert A. Saunders
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351205013
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
This book brings together scholars from across a variety of academic disciplines to assess the current state of the subfield of popular geopolitics. It provides an archaeology of the field, maps the flows of various frameworks of analysis into (and out of) popular geopolitics, and charts a course forward for the discipline. It explores the real-world implications of popular culture, with a particular focus on the evolving interdisciplinary nature of popular geopolitics alongside interrelated disciplines including media, cultural, and gender studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351205013
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
This book brings together scholars from across a variety of academic disciplines to assess the current state of the subfield of popular geopolitics. It provides an archaeology of the field, maps the flows of various frameworks of analysis into (and out of) popular geopolitics, and charts a course forward for the discipline. It explores the real-world implications of popular culture, with a particular focus on the evolving interdisciplinary nature of popular geopolitics alongside interrelated disciplines including media, cultural, and gender studies.
Balkan Smoke
Author: Mary C. Neuburger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146594X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In Balkan Smoke, Mary Neuburger leads readers along the Bulgarian-Ottoman caravan routes and into the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Sofia. She reveals how a remote country was drawn into global economic networks through tobacco production and consumption and in the process became modern. In writing the life of tobacco in Bulgaria from the late Ottoman period through the years of Communist rule, Neuburger gives us much more than the cultural history of a commodity; she provides a fresh perspective on the genesis of modern Bulgaria itself. The tobacco trade comes to shape most of Bulgaria's international relations; it drew Bulgaria into its fateful alliance with Nazi Germany and in the postwar period Bulgaria was the primary supplier of smokes (the famed Bulgarian Gold) for the USSR and its satellites. By the late 1960s Bulgaria was the number one exporter of tobacco in the world, with roughly one eighth of its population involved in production. Through the pages of this book we visit the places where tobacco is grown and meet the merchants, the workers, and the peasant growers, most of whom are Muslim by the postwar period. Along the way, we learn how smoking and anti-smoking impulses influenced perceptions of luxury and necessity, questions of novelty, imitation, value, taste, and gender-based respectability. While the scope is often global, Neuburger also explores the politics of tobacco within Bulgaria. Among the book's surprises are the ways in which conflicts over the tobacco industry (and smoking) help to clarify the forbidding quagmire of Bulgarian politics.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146594X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In Balkan Smoke, Mary Neuburger leads readers along the Bulgarian-Ottoman caravan routes and into the coffeehouses of Istanbul and Sofia. She reveals how a remote country was drawn into global economic networks through tobacco production and consumption and in the process became modern. In writing the life of tobacco in Bulgaria from the late Ottoman period through the years of Communist rule, Neuburger gives us much more than the cultural history of a commodity; she provides a fresh perspective on the genesis of modern Bulgaria itself. The tobacco trade comes to shape most of Bulgaria's international relations; it drew Bulgaria into its fateful alliance with Nazi Germany and in the postwar period Bulgaria was the primary supplier of smokes (the famed Bulgarian Gold) for the USSR and its satellites. By the late 1960s Bulgaria was the number one exporter of tobacco in the world, with roughly one eighth of its population involved in production. Through the pages of this book we visit the places where tobacco is grown and meet the merchants, the workers, and the peasant growers, most of whom are Muslim by the postwar period. Along the way, we learn how smoking and anti-smoking impulses influenced perceptions of luxury and necessity, questions of novelty, imitation, value, taste, and gender-based respectability. While the scope is often global, Neuburger also explores the politics of tobacco within Bulgaria. Among the book's surprises are the ways in which conflicts over the tobacco industry (and smoking) help to clarify the forbidding quagmire of Bulgarian politics.
Regional Networks in Context
Author: LIT Verlag
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 3643964390
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
The 'Balkan space' in the 19th century fell into a zone of limited modernization, which led to an unbalanced economic development. Therefore, the complexity of the circumstances requires research into the process by putting it into a European-wide and Balkan-regional context. International scholars have seen the 19th-century Bulgarian economy as a local phenomenon resulting in very few extensive and detailed works. Accordingly, the editors hope the present study volume will contribute to filling that gap. The case study of the broad and diverse network of people and ventures of the brothers Evlogi and Hristo Georgievi took the 'central stage' of the book as an illustration of the evolution of the Bulgarian society and elite in the 19th century.
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 3643964390
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
The 'Balkan space' in the 19th century fell into a zone of limited modernization, which led to an unbalanced economic development. Therefore, the complexity of the circumstances requires research into the process by putting it into a European-wide and Balkan-regional context. International scholars have seen the 19th-century Bulgarian economy as a local phenomenon resulting in very few extensive and detailed works. Accordingly, the editors hope the present study volume will contribute to filling that gap. The case study of the broad and diverse network of people and ventures of the brothers Evlogi and Hristo Georgievi took the 'central stage' of the book as an illustration of the evolution of the Bulgarian society and elite in the 19th century.
Geopolitical Turmoil in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean
Author: Hall Gardner
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031343182
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
This edited book will examine the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean from multidimensional geo-strategic, political-economic, socio-cultural/religious and demographic perspectives. It analyzes the conflicting geopolitical interests of the major and regional powers, as well as those of NATO and the European Union, with a focus on energy, democracy and corruption, shifts in population, as well as religious political influence. The authors argue that the US, NATO and EU leaderships can no longer afford to ignore the two regions — if the increasing potential for conflict is to be averted. The Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean are returning to a major position in the contemporary geostrategic nexus since NATO began a new expansion into the Balkans by bringing Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in March 2020 into membership, after its previous expansion to Slovenia in NATO’s “Big Bang” in 2004 and to both Albania and Croatia in 2009.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031343182
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
This edited book will examine the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean from multidimensional geo-strategic, political-economic, socio-cultural/religious and demographic perspectives. It analyzes the conflicting geopolitical interests of the major and regional powers, as well as those of NATO and the European Union, with a focus on energy, democracy and corruption, shifts in population, as well as religious political influence. The authors argue that the US, NATO and EU leaderships can no longer afford to ignore the two regions — if the increasing potential for conflict is to be averted. The Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean are returning to a major position in the contemporary geostrategic nexus since NATO began a new expansion into the Balkans by bringing Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in March 2020 into membership, after its previous expansion to Slovenia in NATO’s “Big Bang” in 2004 and to both Albania and Croatia in 2009.
Greece's New Geopolitics
Author: Ian O. Lesser
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 083303233X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
Greece has been profoundly affected by recent changes in the internationalenvironment, on its borders, and within the country itself. Manylong-standing assumptions about Greek interests and Greece_s role havefallen away and have been supplanted by new approaches. The country hasbecome progressively more modern and more European, and its internationalpolicy has become more sophisticated. At the same time, the geopoliticalscene has evolved in ways that present new challenges and new opportunitiesfor Athens in its relations with Europe, the United States, and neighboringcountries. Many of these challenges cross traditional regional boundariesand underscore Greece_s potential to play a transregional role, lookingoutward from Europe to the Mediterranean, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Thisreport explores the new geopolitical environment Greece faces, payingspecial attention to the implications for southeastern Europe andtransatlantic relations; explores options for Greek strategy; and offerssome new directions for policy in Greece and on both sides of the Atlantic.
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 083303233X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
Greece has been profoundly affected by recent changes in the internationalenvironment, on its borders, and within the country itself. Manylong-standing assumptions about Greek interests and Greece_s role havefallen away and have been supplanted by new approaches. The country hasbecome progressively more modern and more European, and its internationalpolicy has become more sophisticated. At the same time, the geopoliticalscene has evolved in ways that present new challenges and new opportunitiesfor Athens in its relations with Europe, the United States, and neighboringcountries. Many of these challenges cross traditional regional boundariesand underscore Greece_s potential to play a transregional role, lookingoutward from Europe to the Mediterranean, Eurasia, and the Middle East. Thisreport explores the new geopolitical environment Greece faces, payingspecial attention to the implications for southeastern Europe andtransatlantic relations; explores options for Greek strategy; and offerssome new directions for policy in Greece and on both sides of the Atlantic.
Hellenic Statecraft and the Geopolitics of Difference
Author: Alex G. Papadopoulos
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 135101868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
This book explores competing definitions of Hellenism in the making of the Greek state by drawing on critical historical and geopolitical perspectives and their intersection with difference and exclusion. It examines Greece’s central role in shaping the state system, regional security, and nationalisms of the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean regions. Understanding the Greek State's social constitution helps learn about the past and present intentions and strategies as well as local, national, and European notions of security and identity. The book looks at the relation of subaltern communities to state power and the state’s ability and willingness to negotiate difference. It also explores how the State’s identity politics shaped regional geopolitics in the past two centuries. Chapters present case studies that shed light on the Hellenization of Jewish Thessaloniki, the Treaty of Lausanne’s making of Western Thrace’s Muslim minority, the role and modes of settlement, urbanization, and ‘bordering-as-statecraft’ in Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, and the politics of erecting the Athens Mosque, the first officially-licensed mosque outside Western Thrace since Greek Independence. With examples from fieldwork in Greek cities and borderlands, this book offers a wealth of primary research from geographers and historians on the modern history of Greek statehood. It will be of key interest to scholars of political geography, international relations, and European history.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 135101868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
This book explores competing definitions of Hellenism in the making of the Greek state by drawing on critical historical and geopolitical perspectives and their intersection with difference and exclusion. It examines Greece’s central role in shaping the state system, regional security, and nationalisms of the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the Eastern Mediterranean regions. Understanding the Greek State's social constitution helps learn about the past and present intentions and strategies as well as local, national, and European notions of security and identity. The book looks at the relation of subaltern communities to state power and the state’s ability and willingness to negotiate difference. It also explores how the State’s identity politics shaped regional geopolitics in the past two centuries. Chapters present case studies that shed light on the Hellenization of Jewish Thessaloniki, the Treaty of Lausanne’s making of Western Thrace’s Muslim minority, the role and modes of settlement, urbanization, and ‘bordering-as-statecraft’ in Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, and the politics of erecting the Athens Mosque, the first officially-licensed mosque outside Western Thrace since Greek Independence. With examples from fieldwork in Greek cities and borderlands, this book offers a wealth of primary research from geographers and historians on the modern history of Greek statehood. It will be of key interest to scholars of political geography, international relations, and European history.
The Balkans
Author: Misha Glenny
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142422568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 802
Book Description
A newly revised and updated edition of an award-winning BBC correspondent's magisterial history of the Balkan region This unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to more than one hundred years of events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Now updated to include the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the capture of all indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav wars, and each state's quest for legitimacy in the European Union, The Balkans explores the often catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142422568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 802
Book Description
A newly revised and updated edition of an award-winning BBC correspondent's magisterial history of the Balkan region This unique and lively history of Balkan geopolitics since the early nineteenth century gives readers the essential historical background to more than one hundred years of events in this war-torn area. No other book covers the entire region, or offers such profound insights into the roots of Balkan violence, or explains so vividly the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. Now updated to include the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the capture of all indicted war criminals from the Yugoslav wars, and each state's quest for legitimacy in the European Union, The Balkans explores the often catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the Great Powers, raising some disturbing questions about Western intervention.