Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia

Slavic Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 917-931 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milica Bakić-Hayden
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
East And West ◽  
East West ◽  
Civilized World

This paper introduces the notion of “nesting orientalisms” to investigate some of the complexity of the east/west dichotomy which has underlain scholarship on “Orientalism” since the publication of Said's classic polemic, a discourse in which “East,” like “West,” is much more of a project than a place. While geographical boundaries of the “Orient“ shifted throughout history, the concept of “Orient” as “other” has remained more or less unchanged. Moreover, cultures and ideologies tacitly presuppose the valorized dichotomy between east and west, and have incorporated various “essences” into the patterns of representation used to describe them. Implied by this essentialism is that humans and their social or cultural institutions are “governed by determinate natures that inhere in them in the same way that they are supposed to inhere in the entities of the natural world.” Thus, eastern Europe has been commonly associated with “backwardness,” the Balkans with “violence,” India with “idealism” or “mysticism,” while the west has identified itself consistently with the “civilized world.“

scholarly journals Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282
Author(s):  
Laura Emmery
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
New Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive Discussion ◽  
Made In

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music (edited by Danijela Špirić Beard and Ljerka Rasmussen) is a fascinating study of how popular music developed in post-World War II Yugoslavia, eventually reaching both unsurpassable popularity in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and critical acclaim in the West. Through the comprehensive discussion of all popular music trends in Yugoslavia − commercial pop (zabavna-pop), rock, punk, new wave, disco, folk (narodna), and neofolk (novokomponovana) − across all six socialist Yugoslav republics, the reader is given the engrossing socio-cultural and political history of the country, providing the audience with a much-needed and riveting context for understanding the formation and the eventual demise of Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Control Orientations in the East and West

2019 ◽  
pp. 509-537
Author(s):  
Susumu Yamaguchi ◽  
Takafumi Sawaumi
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Primary Control ◽  
Secondary Control ◽  
The West ◽  
Value System ◽  
North Americans ◽  
East And West ◽  
Western View ◽  
East West

Individuals exercise control over themselves, others, and environment. According to a seminal work by Weisz, Rothbaum, and Blackburn, which represents a Western view, people in the West prefer to control others or environment to make their life more comfortable (primary control), whereas people in the East prefer to control themselves to fit into environment (secondary control). This chapter critically examines the Western conceptualization of control. Then an alternative view based on Asian value system is presented. According to this view, East–West differences exist not in the target of control (oneself vs. others or environment) but in how people attempt to control others and their environment. The authors present empirical evidence to support the alternative view and propose a framework to understand individuals’ seeking for psychological well-being in the East and West. Westerners (especially North Americans) prefer to control the environment so that they can feel autonomous, whereas Easterners (especially Japanese) care more about consequences of control in terms of interpersonal harmony.

Genocide and Population Displacement in Post‐Communist Eastern Europe

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathie Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The Political ◽  
Minority Populations ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Population Displacement ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
System A ◽  
Mixed Populations

Between 1990 and 2010, the political map of the Balkans and Caucasus changed as Communist regimes collapsed and border disputes escalated. Some of the most bitter conflicts were in areas where there were mixed populations with large ‘minority’ populations that did not recognize potential changes in their borders (Russians in Chechnya or Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo). Religious identities, heavily repressed during the Communist era, became a defining part of the rejection of that system. A revival of militant Islamism after the success of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979 radicalized politics in both the Balkans and the Caucasus. In the former Yugoslavia, Serb nationalists claimed that they were fighting against Islamic encroachment, which became effectively a self-fulfilling prophecy after 11 September 2001. Successionists and politicians eager to redraw boundaries cynically exploited the idea of an ideological purpose and traditional identities under threat to motivate and legitimize armed resistance.

Vaccination and the communist state: polio in Eastern Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora Vargha
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Vaccine Development ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
The West ◽  
Communist State ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Cold War

Through the case of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, this chapter explores the role of Eastern European states in polio prevention and vaccine development in the Cold War. Based on published sources and archival research, the chapter demonstrates that polio facilitated cooperation between the antagonistic sides to prevent a disease that equally affected East and West. Moreover, it argues that Eastern Europe was seen – both by Eastern European states and the West - as different when it came to polio prevention, since the communist states were considered to be particularly well suited to test and successfully implement vaccines.

scholarly journals Utopias and “Normality”: 1968 Revisited Fifty Years On

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 890-896
Author(s):  
Jacques Rupnik
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
International Crisis ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
East West ◽  
The Way

The Prague Spring of 1968 did not provoke a major international crisis but at most an “incident” in the making of east-west detente. Yet it deserves to be revisited for three reasons of lasting significance for Europe. First, the Prague Spring revived, beyond the contemporary writings on Czech “democratic exceptionalism,” the European debate about the relationship between socialism and democracy. Second, it was often interpreted as part of an international generational revolt against the establishments, yet it also revealed sharp contrasts between east and west. Can the misunderstandings and different legacies of 1968 in Paris and Prague be enlightening for trans-European dialogue (or lack of) after 1989? Third, Czechoslovakia in 1968 represented the most far-reaching blueprint for reforming the system within the Soviet sphere. Its crushing prevented reform in eastern Europe and Moscow. Although it provided inspiration for Gorbachev's belated, botched attempt to save the system, this was twenty years too late, thus paving the way for its implosion in 1989.

scholarly journals Introduction

Focaal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (53) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Owczarzak
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
East And West ◽  
East West

The introduction to this special section explores the ways in which postcolonial studies contribute a deeper understanding of postsocialist change in Central and Eastern Europe. Since the collapse of socialism, anthropological and other social science studies of Eastern Europe have highlighted deep divides between “East” and “West” and drawn attention to the ways in which socialist practices persist into the postsocialist period. We seek to move beyond discourses of the East/West divide by examining the postsocialist context through the lens of postcolonial studies. We look at four aspects of postcolonial studies and explore their relevance for understanding postsocialist Eastern Europe: orientalism, nation and identity, hybridity, and voice. These themes are particular salient from the perspective of gender and sexuality, key concepts through which both postcolonialism and postsocialism can be understood. We thus pay particular attention to the exchange of ideas between East/West, local/global, and national/international arenas.

Democracy in Eastern Europe as a Civilising Process

2000 ◽  
Vol 48 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 288-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Wydra
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
The West ◽  
Communist State ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
East And West ◽  
Western Experience

In this chapter, Harald Wydra argues that the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe has been a long-term social process interwoven with the collapse of communism whose origins are long before 1989. He challenges the vision of East and West as two isolated blocs that prevailed in the 1950s and the assumption of gradual convergence that became widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. His main focus is upon the East where, he believes, dissident movements created a ‘second reality’, undermining the myths propounded by the official communist establishment. He argues that there was an increase in self-restraint on the part of the communist state accompanied by the growth of civil society and non-violent political opposition. The East experienced a feeling of ‘unrequited love’ in its relationship to the West. Dissidents took their standards and aspirations from Western experience but found themselves largely ignored by the West. Since 1989, democratisation has increased the influence of western models and standards but it has also led to a breakdown of self-restraint and an upsurge of violence.

scholarly journals THE POLITICAL, ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS IN THE BALKANS IN THE LAST DECADE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Rustambekova ◽  
◽  
А.A. Ospanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Political Conflicts

The article discusses the prerequisites for the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, which was the "center" of conflicts at the global level, in particular, the onset of religious, ethnic, political conflicts in the Balkans in the last decade of the twentieth century, chronological and geographical conflicts. Specific characteristics are differentiated. The article also examines the situation in which the socialist states of Eastern Europe gained independence from the collapse of the Soviet government in 1991-1992, in particular, in the economic sphere. The epochal systemic changes that followed the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia predetermined a radical change in political, social and spiritual orientations and expectations in society. At the same time, the historical consciousness of peoples (like no other sphere of public, including ethnic self-identification) was involved in general transformational processes, reflecting in its development the well-known inconsistency and inconsistency of the socio-political evolution of the former republics in recent decades.

Subcultural Capital

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond A. Patton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Alternative Culture ◽  
East And West ◽  
Explosive Reaction ◽  
The Right

This chapter shows punk’s explosive reaction with (and against) the globalizing music industries of the East and West using the concept of “subcultural capital”—which punk bands needed to maintain their alternative credibility with punks, but which could be exchanged for record contracts in the right situation. It examines the different responses to this dilemma among punk scenes in the West (London and New York), and two distinct types of punk scenes in communist Eastern Europe (those of states that divided bands into categories of “professional” and “amateur” and those of states that did not). Strategies ranged from attempting to cordon off a sphere of alternative culture untouched by the market to setting the market against itself. Each strategy gave its corresponding scene a distinct local inflection.

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