What is in Balkan History? Spaces and Scales in the Tradition of Southeast-European Studies

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Mishkova

AbstractThis article takes a distance from the debate about 'symbolic geographies' and structural definitions of historical spaces as well as from surveying discrete disciplinary traditions or political agendas of regionalist scholarship in and on Southeastern Europe. Its purpose instead has been two-fold. On the one hand, to bring to light a preexistent but largely suppressed and un-reflected tradition of regionalist scholarship with the hope that this could help us fine tune the way we conceptualize, contemplate and evaluate regionalism as politics and transnationalism as a scholarly project. In epistemological terms, on the other hand, it proposes a theoretical perspective to regionalist scholarship involving rigorous engagement with the scales of observation, and scale shifts, in the interpretation of history. The hypothesis the article seeks to test maintains that the national and the (meso)regional perspectives to history chart differentiated 'spaces of experience' — i.e. the same occurrences are reported and judged in a different manner on the different scales — by way of displacing the valency of past processes, events, actors, and institutions and creating divergent temporalities — different national and regional historical times. Different objects (i.e. spaces) of enquiry are therefore coextensive with different temporal layers, each of which demands a different methodological approach. Drawing on texts of regional scholars, in which the historical reality of the Balkans/Southeastern Europe is articulated explicitly or implicitly, the article discusses also the relationship between different spaces and scales at the backdrop of the Braudelian and the microhistorical perspectives.

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-328
Author(s):  
Manuela Nevaci

"Romance Concordances and Balcano-Romance Convergences in the South-Danubian Romanian Dialects. Phonetic, Morphological, and Syntactic Aspects. This paper proposes to emphasise the linguistic similarities of South-Danubian Romanian dialects (Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian) spoken in Albania, Croatia, R. of North Macedonia, Greece and Romania from the perspective of Romance and Balkan elements. We will take into consideration lexical aspects, from the point of view of linguistic contact with Balkan languages, as well as Romance elements that define these historical dialects of common Romanian. Our exposition is based on the broader theme of the relationship between genealogic (Romance features inherited from Latin, speaking of concordances in the Romance languages) and areal (convergences between the Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian dialects of the Romanian language and the languages spoken in the Balkan area). Through the presence of the Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian dialects of Romanian in the Balkans, creating a bridge between Romània and Balkan, a convergence was attained on the one hand with the Romance languages, and, on the other, with Greek, Albanian North Macedonian as Balkan languages. Keywords: South Danubian Romanian dialects, Aromanian dialect, Megleno-Romanian dialect, Istro-Romanian dialect, morphological and syntax dialectal system."


Stanovnistvo ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 7-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron Kotzamanis

Three basic questions are under consideration in today?s demographic community: a) the European geography of demographic behaviors allows us to consider the geopolitical area of S.E. Europe as uniform and clearly distinguished from the rest of Europe, b) to what extent the observed recent evolutions in the ex "socialist" S.E. European countries are registered in the long term or/and have been affected by the seismic policies and socio-economic changes as well as the consequent difficulties the inhabitants of these countries meet during the transition period and finally c) the demographic perspectives of these countries and their direct and indirect implications. In this article we do not aspire to give answers to all of the above questions. Initially, we confined ourselves to a synthetic presentation of post-war demographic evolutions (giving indirectly an answer to the question of the existence or nonexistence of a demographic profile of the Balkans). Then we focused our attention to the expected demographic trends and the problems they raise on the one hand, to the labor market of these countries on their course to free market, and on the other hand, to the migration pressures these countries might bring upon the neighboring E.C. countries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-317
Author(s):  
Burak Çavuş

Bu çalışmada, 1960-1990 yılları arasında yayınlanan ve Avrupa’ya işçi göçünü konu edinen romanlar izleksel bağlamda incelenmiştir. Romanlardaki temel izlekler çerçevesinde göç süreci irdelenmiş, inceleme, göçmenlerin tanımlanmasında ve adlandırılmasında kullanılan Gastarbeiter (konuk işçi) Auslander (yabancı) kavramları ve Almanlar tarafından Türk kimliğine atfedilen çağrışımlar üzerinden yürütülmüştür. Göçmenlere yönelik politikalarda ve yaklaşımlarda onların nasıl tanımlandığının etkili olduğuna ve yazınsal süreçte de bu politika ve yaklaşımların belirleyici olduğu savından hareket edilmiştir. Bu noktada adlandırmaların, tanımlamaların göç olayı çerçevesinde biz ve öteki ilişkisi üzerindeki etkisine odaklanılmış; toplum ve yazın ilişkisi temelinde incelenen romanlar üzerinden göç ve göçmenlik meselesine dair çıkarımlar yapılmıştır. Bunlar arasında, ayrımcılık, kötü çalışma koşulları, hak ihlalleri, ırkçılık ve ötekileştirme gibi başat sorunların bu eserlerde merkezi konumda olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Böylece çalışmanın amacı olan göç yazınını oluşturan temel izleklere ulaşılmış; sosyolojik ve tarihsel gerçekliğin yazınsal gerçekliğe aktarılmasında etkili olan unsurlar ön plana çıkarılmıştır. ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH Main Patterns in Migration Novels In this study, the novels published between 1960-1990 and dealing with the migration of workers to Europe were examined in a contextual context. The process of immigration has been examined within the framework of the basic lines in the novels, through the concepts of Gastarbeiter (guest worker), Auslander (foreigner) used in the identification and naming of immigrants and connotations attributed to Turkish identity was conducted. The argument is that how they are defined is effective in policies and approaches towards immigrants and that these policies and approaches are determinative in the literary process. At this point, the effect of naming definitions on us and the other relationship within the framework of migration has been focused; there are inferences about the issue of migration and immigration through the novels examined on the basis of the relationship between society and literature. Among these, it has been determined that dominant problems such as discrimination, poor working violations, racism and marginalization are central to these works. Thus, the basic themes that constitute the migration literature, which is the aim of the study have been reached and the factors that are effective in transferring the sociological and historical reality have been brought the fore.


1968 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-617
Author(s):  
Mohammad Anisur Rahman

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the relationship between the degree of aggregate labour-intensity and the aggregate volume of saving in an economy where a Cobb-6ouglas production function in its traditional form can be assumed to give a good approximation to reality. The relationship in ques¬tion has an obviously important bearing on economic development policy in the area of choice of labour intensity. To the extent that and in the range where an increase in labour intensity would adversely affect the volume of savings, a con¬flict arises between two important social objectives, i.e., higher rate of capital formation on the one hand and greater employment and distributive equity on the other. If relative resource endowments in the economy are such that such a "competitive" range of labour-intensity falls within the nation's attainable range of choice, development planners will have to arrive at a compromise between these two social goals.


Author(s):  
Peter Coss

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.


Author(s):  
Ulf Brunnbauer

This chapter analyzes historiography in several Balkan countries, paying particular attention to the communist era on the one hand, and the post-1989–91 period on the other. When communists took power in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia in 1944–5, the discipline of history in these countries—with the exception of Albania—had already been institutionalized. The communists initially set about radically changing the way history was written in order to construct a more ideologically suitable past. In 1989–91, communist dictatorships came to an end in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Years of war and ethnic cleansing would ensue in the former Yugoslavia. These upheavals impacted on historiography in different ways: on the one hand, the end of communist dictatorship brought freedom of expression; on the other hand, the region faced economic displacement.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Maria Ledstam

This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 681-693
Author(s):  
Ariel Furstenberg

AbstractThis article proposes to narrow the gap between the space of reasons and the space of causes. By articulating the standard phenomenology of reasons and causes, we investigate the cases in which the clear-cut divide between reasons and causes starts to break down. Thus, substituting the simple picture of the relationship between the space of reasons and the space of causes with an inverted and complex one, in which reasons can have a causal-like phenomenology and causes can have a reason-like phenomenology. This is attained by focusing on “swift reasoned actions” on the one hand, and on “causal noisy brain mechanisms” on the other hand. In the final part of the article, I show how an analogous move, that of narrowing the gap between one’s normative framework and the space of reasons, can be seen as an extension of narrowing the gap between the space of causes and the space of reasons.


2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Galko ◽  

The ontological question of what there is, from the perspective of common sense, is intricately bound to what can be perceived. The above observation, when combined with the fact that nouns within language can be divided between nouns that admit counting, such as ‘pen’ or ‘human’, and those that do not, such as ‘water’ or ‘gold’, provides the starting point for the following investigation into the foundations of our linguistic and conceptual phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to claim that such phenomena are facilitated by, on the one hand, an intricate cognitive capacity, and on the other by the complex environment within which we live. We are, in a sense, cognitively equipped to perceive discrete instances of matter such as bodies of water. This equipment is related to, but also differs from, that devoted to the perception of objects such as this computer. Behind this difference in cognitive equipment underlies a rich ontology, the beginnings of which lies in the distinction between matter and objects. The following paper is an attempt to make explicit the relationship between matter and objects and also provide a window to our cognition of such entities.


2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schredl ◽  
Arthur Funkhouser ◽  
Nicole Arn

Empirical studies largely support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. The present study investigated the frequency and emotional tone of dreams of truck drivers. On the one hand, the findings of the present study partly support the continuity regarding the time spent with driving/being in the truck and driving dreams and, on the other hand, a close relationship was found between daytime mood (feelings of stress, job satisfaction) and dream emotions, i.e., different dream characteristics were affected by different aspects of daytime activity. The results, thus, indicate that it is necessary to define very clearly how this continuity is to be conceptualized. The approach of formulating a mathematical model (cf. [1]) should be adopted in future studies in order to specify the factors and their magnitude in the relationship between waking and dreaming.


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