Multiple-holistic analysis conducted in the Western Balkans has shown that context(s)in the Western Balkans are overflowed with stereotypes, prejudice, and religious intolerance. Thesethree phenomena were included in extensive multiple-holistic case study by conducting interviewsand open-ended surveys among peace activists, journalists, politicians, as well as members of thecivil society, in the countries of North Macedonia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Kosovo. The researchfindings draw a picture of a still deeply prejudiced and divided societies. People categorizeeach other according to their religion (...) and ethnicity. The group they identified themselves with representsthe reference for what is good or bad. Stereotypes and prejudice are deeply rooted in andtransmitted in early childhood experiences, in most cases as a result of family trauma as a consequenceof an earlier conflict. Also, ethnic prejudice are deeply rooted in state systems. Religion inthese contexts plays a crucial but subtle role in designing unstable and divided contexts. It keepsto its own communities and values through exclusion of the others instead of using its power forunifying and tolerance purposes. The presence of deeply rooted stereotypes and prejudice createuncertain societies and uncertainty among people. The conflict contexts in the Western Balkansrequire a serious and sustainable strategy for building relationships among people regardless oftheir ethnicity and religious affiliation in the long term. (shrink)

Once widely spread in the Dinaric Mountains part of the Balkan Peninsula, swearing to virginity was a social and cultural custom recorded among all groups inhabiting the area. In the absence of a capable adult man in the household, a daughter would take over his social role by ‘becoming’ a man. The standard explanation is that the function of this practice is enabling the continuation of the household’s economic, social, and religious activities. We argue that this explanation fails. A better (...) explanation is that, because the lack of a particular kind of a man (competent and honourable) was perceived as a shame in these societies, the primary reason for swearing to virginity was saving family honour. (shrink)

Being one of the largest movements of displaced people through European borders since World War Two, the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, tested the coordination of the states and international organizations, and as well as the strategies for response of the latter to such enormous fluxes of displaced people along the Balkan corridor. The quick on-time reaction of the specialized humanitarian international organizations made significant achievements by the international organizations in terms of humanitarian assistance for the refugees and (...) support for the governments of the region. Their approach mainly sought to create a partnership with the governments of the Balkan route in handling the serious humanitarian challenges, it showed how important is such coordination at the end, with an aim to avoid further human catastrophes along refugee routes, and to avoid major security repercussions for the countries of the region. With a comparative approach, the paper analyzes the response of the international organizations in terms of the strategies they have applied along the Balkan human corridor and their new innovative approaches used in terms of the coordination with the local authorities and governments of the Balkan route. Different to previous forms of humanitarian interventions and dynamics of the refugee crisis, the roles of the international organizations along the Balkan human corridor following the Syrian war of 2015 and 2016 have shaped many innovative dimensions, including firstly their advising orientation and support for refugees and local authorities. Apart from humanitarian activities for delivering direct aid, the major intergovernmental organizations following the implementation of border controls from very beginning of the refugee crisis have been focused in supporting the local authorities as well as on regulating the flow of migrants. The strategies of response by the international organizations in the latest case of the Balkan human corridor notably shifted from the classical humanitarian dimension of their reactions. These strategies have played as well an important role in advising, and especially in developing a partnership with the local authorities capacity building and legal support for both local institutions and refugees. However, through the comparative approaches the paper identifies that there are different models of management roles played by the specialized international organizations in various countries of the Balkan route and its frontiers. (shrink)

Cultural pluralism in the Balkans has often been considered as the source of conflict in the region. Against this perspective it is suggested that Enlightenment political thought in southeastern Europe, as represented by the radical republicanism of Rhigas Velestinlis , incorporated the idea of cultural pluralism in a project for a unitary democratic state, modelled on the 'Republic of Virtue', that was expected to replace despotism and to transform its subjects into free citizens. The political culture of this state (...) would be provided by the principles of republican Hellenism while its ethnic pluralism would be located in its civil society. It is stressed that republican Hellenism was a political and moral, not an ethnic, project. This political project however, was preempted by the emergence of cultural nationalism that cancelled the Enlightenment vision of democratic citizenship, equality and recognition for individuals as well as ethnic groups in a unitary republic. (shrink)

Assesses the success of the two humanitarian interventions in the Balkans – Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 – from the perspective of humanitarian organizations. It argues how, ironically, the effectiveness of organizations such as UNHCR can dissuade powerful states from taking the necessary steps to address the root causes of massive human rights violations. Slow and ambiguous action from the international community can raise false expectations on the part of suffering civilians, and embolden those who commit atrocities. (...) The author argues that the political, military, and humanitarian strands of interventions are always closely interwoven, and draws a series of lessons from the Balkans experience: the need for the international community to act early, credibly, and consistently; the importance of preserving the identity of a humanitarian operation; the imperative to end the impunity of those who orchestrate and commit massive violations of human rights; and the importance of engaging the United Nations. (shrink)

The Balkan War was a conflict that provoked many parties to intervene. The war was also covered by a number of journalists, who carried out what we may call a “media intervention.” This article ana...

The main thesis of this article is that Western societies risk becoming Balkanized if they confront the superdiversity issue without sound management of intolerance. The Balkanization process has some essential features that allow the use of this term outside the area of origin (namely the Balkan Peninsula). Thus: It always affects a diverse political unit that comprises an inextricable medley of racial, ethnocultural, religious, ideological, or gender identities. It emerges only where neither the hegemony principle nor the confederacy principle can (...) sustain a divided population’s peaceful coexistence. It entails “antagonistic and conflict-oriented relationships resistant to resolution” between the groups or classes dissociated from a diverse political unit. It increases the density of physical and psychological boundaries between the formerly associated parts. It is perpetuated by the great sponsors of the dissociated parts. Any diverse political unit can enter a process of Balkanization, regardless of its degree of culture and civilization. Balkanization does not have a fatal course. Just as there is no society immune to Balkanization, there is no diverse society doomed to Balkanization. Balkanization can be prevented, checked, stopped, or reversed, depending on society members’ individual and collective actions. To survive, the superdiverse liberal democracies from the Euro-Atlantic area need an agonistic public sphere, where actionable truths emerge from a genuine clash of educated opinions. If intolerance management is the first step in preventing the Balkanization of a superdiverse political unit, promoting social and political tolerance towards all people who express educated opinions is the best starting point to genuine tolerance. The return to Enlightenment rationalism values that underpinned our freedom of thought and expression will help us meet the challenges inherent in current and future superdiversity. By feeding enlightened conversations and debates with genuine, educated opinions, people learn to have tolerance for “unpleasant” pieces of knowledge. Then, they spread general tolerance – as a by-product – across the entire society. (shrink)

The article aims to assess a change in the EU’s soft power in the Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership states in the light of the crises the bloc has undergone in recent years. Generally agreeing with the common argument that the EU’s attractiveness for those countries has decreased, the author challenges the popular wisdom that such a decrease is likely to reverse those states’ pro-EU foreign policy orientations. To prove it, the author applies Joseph Nye’s and Alexander Vuving’s “power currencies” (...) approach to operationalize soft power, considering the bloc’s attraction as a combination of “brilliance” (the actor’s relationship with its work), “benignity” (the actor’s relationship with other actors) and “beauty” (the actor’s relationship with values and ideas). Elaborating on the crises’ influence on each of these currencies, the author shows that their lessening, first, has mainly taken place in absolute rather than relative terms, so the EU’s attractiveness remains strong compared to that of its competitors, and second, it has primarily affected the bloc’s soft power potential rather than its actual behavior towards the target countries. (shrink)

The article is devoted to an analysis of Carpathian-Balkan studies conducted by the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2006. The Slovak tradition is an important one, as it displays characteristics which are common to the Carpathian region as a whole. Furthermore, there are a number of Carpathian-South Slavic and Carpathian-Balkan parallels in terminology and related phenomena in folk culture.

The Kohl government sought a policy on the Balkan crisis that would both appeal to the self-conscious pacifist-internationalist strain in German public opinion and avoid direct German and European responsibility for the largely unknown consequences of that policy.

The article looks into the history of the Albanian national question and the Balkans. It talks about the intellectual movement known as the Albanian National Renaissance which was considered the key catalyst of many important processes for the organization of Albanians. It mentions the Albanian nationalism that represents a sui generis nationalism, which has gone through transformations over time and created as an intellectual and cultural nationalism through a nationwide movement.

The paper examines the meanings of representations of Serbia, the Balkans and Europe at the time of encounter between Enlightenment and Romanticist traditions. The analysis starts from the assumption that the emergence of negative representations of South Eastern Europe cannot be discussed without placing it within the broader context of 18th and 19th century philosophy and literature and the consequences of new philosophical and literary ideas. Underlying the substantial change of the previously dominant paradigms that is expressed in the (...) symbolic division into 'West' and "East', there was a factual rather than symbolic division into an industrial and an agricultural Europe, whose boundaries coincided with the reference points of the symbolic distinction. Insisting on the importance of both analytic levels - the 'symbolic' and the 'factual' - the first section of the paper briefly outlines the development of symbolic geography in the context of 'Balkan' studies in the 1990s, as well as the failure of this genre and the constructivist paradigm in Serbian social theory. The second section is devoted to the discourses of conceptualizing broader communities in symbolic, linguistic, imagological, cultural, political, economic etc. terms, focusing on the beginnings of ideological and linguistic unification of South Slavs and their inclusion into the "enlightened Europe". By analyzing Vuk Stefanovia: Karadzix's writings, as well as correspondence, articles and commentaries referring to Vuk's work in the first half of the 19th century, the author takes the perspective of the past in order to identify the reasons for the failure of imagological and constructivist approach today. U ovom tekstu autorka istrazuje znacenja predstava o Srbiji, Balkanu i Evropi u vremenu susreta prosvetiteljske i romanticarske tradicije. Polaziste je u pretpostavci da se o pocecima negativnih predstava o jugoistocnom delu Evrope ne moze govoriti izvan sireg konteksta filozofije i knjizevnosti XVIII i XIX veka i posledica novih filozofskih i knjizevnih ideja. Sustinska pramena do tada vladajucih paradigmi, izrazena simbolickom podelom na 'Zapad'i 'Istok', u osnovi je imala manje simbolicku a vise fakticku podelu na industrijsku i zemljoradnicku Evropu, cije su se granice uglavnom poklapale sa referentnim tockama simbolicke distinkcije. Potencirajuci vaznost obaju nivoa u analizi, 'simbolickog 'i 'faktickog', prvi deo teksta odnosi se na sazeto predstavljanje razvoja simbolicke geografije u kontekstu studija o Balkanu devedesetih godina proslog veka, kao i na neuspeh ovog zanra i konstruktivisticke paradigme u srpskoj drustvenoj teoriji. Drugi deo teksta posvecenje diskursima osmisljavanja vecih zajednica na simbolickim, jezickim, imagoloskim, kulturnim, politickim, ekonomskim i dr. osnovama, sa fokusom na pocetke idejnog i jezickog ujedinjenja Juznih Slavena, kao i njihovog ukljucenja u prosvecenu Evropu. Analizom tekstova Vuka Stefanovica Karadzica, kao i prepiskama, clancima i komentarima koji su se odnosili na Vukov rad u prvoj polovini XIX veka, autorka iz perspektive proslosti pokusava da ukaze na razloge neuspeha imagoloskog i konstruktivistickog pristupa u savremenosti. (shrink)

State law requirements for health care advance directive documents were reviewed in every state and the District of Columbia to determine whether they are consistent and/or flexible enough to permit the utilization by the public of “universal” advance directive forms, specifically a health care power of attorney, that would be valid under every state's advance directive statutes. Such documents would have to overcome the wide variability of state legal formalities for validity. If this could be accomplished, the public would benefit (...) from having a variety of multi-state or truly universal forms available that could be used with confidence in their validity.The review found that a basic, multi-state health care power of attorney appears to be feasible in 41 States and the District of Columbia, compared to 36 states and the District in 2005. Only nine states prevent recognition of a truly universal form. Some barriers were surmountable, including differing agent and witness requirements, execution requirements, and effectiveness triggers. Other barriers were insurmountable, including mandatory forms, mandatory disclosures, and decision-specific language requirements. The strategies identified for overcoming some barriers can be used by lawyers in drafting true multi-state directives. More importantly, states should simplify state advance directive laws to facilitate a more meaningful communication model of advance care planning. (shrink)

Although hypointellectuals have long been a part of our cultural landscape, it is in post-conflict societies, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, that there has arisen a strong need for a different breed of intellectual, one who is more than simply a social critic, an educator, a person of action, and a compassionate individual. Enter the non-partisan intellectual—the hyperintellectual. It is the hyperintellectual, whose non-partisanship is manifested through a reciprocating critique and defense of both the nationalist enterprise and strong (...) interventionism of the International Community, who strives to create a climate of understanding and to enlarge the moral space so as to reduce the divisiveness between opposing parties. It is in this way that the hyperintellectual acts as a catalyst for the creation of a democratic culture within the civil societies of Bosnia and Kosovo. (shrink)

Publication date: 25 October 2017 Source: Author: Ivana Slavoljub Domazet, Darko Milivoj Marjanović The main aim of this work is to determine, on the basis of empirical research, whether and to what extent foreign direct investment has impact on the overall economic development of selected countries in the Western Balkans. Analyses made for the purpose of this paper were performed on the basis of available secondary data possessed by the World Bank for the period of 2000-2012. The research methodology (...) involved the use of the techniques of linear regression and correlation analysis. The first task was to determine whether there is an impact of foreign direct investment on the overall economic development of these countries. Where such influence occurred, it was necessary to define its level in comparison to the influence of other variables. The results of the analysis in this paper suggest that inflow of foreign direct investment does not affect to a significant extent the economic development of selected countries in the Western Balkans. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Plantinga maintains it is possible to come to know that Christianity is true, but only from the inside. Further, since Plantinga argues that one’s judgments about the epistemic status of Christian belief depend upon one’s prephilosophical metaphysical views, his position amounts to the claim that the Christian community has privileged access to truth and that non-Christians are ill-equipped to evaluate their beliefs. The upshot of Plantinga’s position is, I suggest, that people from different communities (...) will disagree about the epistemic status of religious belief, and reason is simply incapable of adjudicating those disputes. (shrink)

In the preceding year, according to Western sources, about 2,000 people had been killed in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo and there were several hundred thousand internal refugees. The humanitarian catastrophe was overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military and police forces, the main victims being ethnic Albanian Kosovars, commonly said to constitute about 90 percent of the population. After three days of bombing, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, several thousand refugees had been expelled to Albania and Macedonia, the (...) two neighboring countries. Refugees reported that the terror had reached the capital city of Pristina, largely spared before, and provided credible accounts of large-scale destruction of villages, assassinations, and a radical increase in generation of refugees, perhaps an effort to expel a good part of the Albanian population. Within two weeks the flood of refugees had reached some 350,000, mostly from the southern sections of Kosovo adjoining Macedonia and Albania, while unknown numbers of Serbs fled north to Serbia to escape the increased violence from the air and on the ground. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 4, August 2024, Page 467-472.

Pour compléter ce numéro, nous avons voulu échanger avec Krassimira Daskalova, professeure d’histoire contemporaine à l’université St. Kliment Ohridski de Sofia. Ses recherches personnelles sur la Bulgarie et les Balkans, mais aussi ses activités de coordination de la recherche – qui l’ont conduite, notamment, à présider l’International Federation for Research in Women’s History entre 2005 et 2010 – font de K. Daskalova une actrice de premier plan dans le développement de l’histoire des femme...

This book is of interest to critical realists because its writers show how the neoliberal reforms in the Balkans, related to the provision of social security, demonstrate a complex combination of d...