tive academic methodology as ‘refl exive ethnography’ (13). He, however, also relies on other theories and methodologies, such as those of the social anthropologist George Marcus and his writings on places. Halilovich considers ‘place’ to be a factor that contributes to people’s identities and to be a concept that is never fi xed or static. Furthermore, he refers to the Foucauldian term ‘popular memory’. For example, he shows how the popular memories of survivors of the Prijedor and Srebrenica massacres now living in St. Louis, Missouri, have even become part of an offi cial commemoration, initiated in 2005. In sum, most of Halilovich’s fi ndings derive from personal stories collected in interviews and related sources. While he might have problematized his methodological approach somewhat more clearly, his main argument is easily comprehensible even to someone who has no profound knowledge of ethnographic methods. The bott om-up perspective in particular makes Places of Pain an interesting and moving read. Halilovich employs many Bosnian words to describe local habits and traditions; he also includes a great variety of personal stories and anecdotes about forced displacement. Through these testimonies he accesses broader developments. While this approach does not provide a comprehensive overview of the confl ict and its consequences, it conveys its diverse—often horrifying—impact and consequences in diff erent places. Sejo, for example, one of the interviewees, now works as a nurse in Austria, but had been a student when his village was raided and ethnically cleansed by Serb militias. Nowadays, a quarter of a century after his forced exodus, he is still searching for the remains of his father among Bosnian mass graves. Halilovich’s personal commitment to the transformed places in Bosnia and to the displaced persons he interviewed is of great value to his book. At the same time, precisely because of this involvement, he may have produced a too nostalgic, indeed too rosy image of multicultural eastern Bosnian villages before the war. And in the last chapter, where the author seeks to underline yet again the diversity of forced displacement, he suddenly switches to a gender perspective. Although the chapter incorporates insights from the previous chapters in an interesting manner, its sudden, exclusive focus on women comes across as an abrupt shift. Perhaps it would have been more eff ective to have integrated insights about gender with the conceptual approach taken in the other chapters. Ever drawn to testimony, Halilovich introduces three new personal stories even in the book’s conclusion. He might have included these accounts earlier, which would have improved the structure of the book. By adding them at the end, he returns once more to his most pervasive theme: the immense diversity of displaced persons and their life stories. In Halilovich’s words: ‘what emerges from the heterogeneity and diversity of the performative enactments of memories and
{"title":"Shane Brennan / Marc Herzog, eds, Turkey and the Politics of National Identity. Social, Economic and Cultural Transformation","authors":"Christian Mady","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0011","url":null,"abstract":"tive academic methodology as ‘refl exive ethnography’ (13). He, however, also relies on other theories and methodologies, such as those of the social anthropologist George Marcus and his writings on places. Halilovich considers ‘place’ to be a factor that contributes to people’s identities and to be a concept that is never fi xed or static. Furthermore, he refers to the Foucauldian term ‘popular memory’. For example, he shows how the popular memories of survivors of the Prijedor and Srebrenica massacres now living in St. Louis, Missouri, have even become part of an offi cial commemoration, initiated in 2005. In sum, most of Halilovich’s fi ndings derive from personal stories collected in interviews and related sources. While he might have problematized his methodological approach somewhat more clearly, his main argument is easily comprehensible even to someone who has no profound knowledge of ethnographic methods. The bott om-up perspective in particular makes Places of Pain an interesting and moving read. Halilovich employs many Bosnian words to describe local habits and traditions; he also includes a great variety of personal stories and anecdotes about forced displacement. Through these testimonies he accesses broader developments. While this approach does not provide a comprehensive overview of the confl ict and its consequences, it conveys its diverse—often horrifying—impact and consequences in diff erent places. Sejo, for example, one of the interviewees, now works as a nurse in Austria, but had been a student when his village was raided and ethnically cleansed by Serb militias. Nowadays, a quarter of a century after his forced exodus, he is still searching for the remains of his father among Bosnian mass graves. Halilovich’s personal commitment to the transformed places in Bosnia and to the displaced persons he interviewed is of great value to his book. At the same time, precisely because of this involvement, he may have produced a too nostalgic, indeed too rosy image of multicultural eastern Bosnian villages before the war. And in the last chapter, where the author seeks to underline yet again the diversity of forced displacement, he suddenly switches to a gender perspective. Although the chapter incorporates insights from the previous chapters in an interesting manner, its sudden, exclusive focus on women comes across as an abrupt shift. Perhaps it would have been more eff ective to have integrated insights about gender with the conceptual approach taken in the other chapters. Ever drawn to testimony, Halilovich introduces three new personal stories even in the book’s conclusion. He might have included these accounts earlier, which would have improved the structure of the book. By adding them at the end, he returns once more to his most pervasive theme: the immense diversity of displaced persons and their life stories. In Halilovich’s words: ‘what emerges from the heterogeneity and diversity of the performative enactments of memories and","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"115 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67294906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Xavier Bougarel, Survivre aux empires. Islam, identité nationale et allégeances politiques en Bosnie-Herzégovine","authors":"Nicolas Moll","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"109 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67294967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Greece’s education system lags behind those of other European countries. Its two overarching problems, which encompass many others, are (a) the incompatibility of school knowledge and societal needs, and (b) the low performance of public schools. Because of these inadequacies, there exists a ‘shadow education system’ of private cramming courses preparing students for the required qualifications for university admission. Despite recurring criticisms from international organizations, the relative position of Greece to other countries has not improved. This paper addresses why there has been no improvement so far despite Greece’s use of available resources and expertise supplied by the EU. To explain why there has been no change, the authors trace the Greek system’s problems to historical antecedents and examine the political and social forces resisting educational change at present.
{"title":"Greek education. Explaining two centuries of static reproduction","authors":"M. Kelpanides, Despoina Poimenidou, Zoe Malivitsi","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Greece’s education system lags behind those of other European countries. Its two overarching problems, which encompass many others, are (a) the incompatibility of school knowledge and societal needs, and (b) the low performance of public schools. Because of these inadequacies, there exists a ‘shadow education system’ of private cramming courses preparing students for the required qualifications for university admission. Despite recurring criticisms from international organizations, the relative position of Greece to other countries has not improved. This paper addresses why there has been no improvement so far despite Greece’s use of available resources and expertise supplied by the EU. To explain why there has been no change, the authors trace the Greek system’s problems to historical antecedents and examine the political and social forces resisting educational change at present.","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"226 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67295070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
civil society in post-confl ict societies, they evaluate the power-sharing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia that has resulted from the Dayton (1995) and Ohrid (2001) agreements. The authors reach the grim if predictable conclusion that both political systems and civil societies are weak and that support is needed from international actors, but they recognize that at the same time that would undermine ‘the very principles of local ownership’ (210). The contributions of Stefano Bianchini, Wladimir Fischer and Ian D. Armour are off -topic, but well writt en and interesting in their own right. Bianchini discusses the resurgence of nationalism in times of crisis and can deploy particular expertise on the economic crisis of the 1980s in Yugoslavia. He claims that for EU too there looms a similar retreat to nationalism as occurred in Yugoslavia during the 1980s, at least if further austerity policies are imposed. From his work based on the analysis of a selection of Croat and Serb magazines from the 1980s, Fischer argues that ‘from the 1950s onwards, nationalist traditions were catered to in the framework of Yugoslavism, which was itself nationalist in a new, multi-nationalist way’ (71). Hence, when nationalist discourse became dominant in Yugoslavia during the 1980s, it was within a framework that already provided for national categories. Armour meanwhile presents a historical account of Austro-Hungary-Serbia relations in the second half of the 19th century, with its focus on the work of the Serbian Historian Vasilije Krestić. Armour argues that Krestić’s ‘portrayal of anyone but the Serbs as manipulators and hegemonists’ implies that Serbs are ‘blameless victims’ (107) and shows how Krestić’s work serves the diplomatic interests of Serbia in the region and that it was matched by the policies of the Croats and other forces within the Dual Monarchy, thereby Armour places Serbian victimhood in perspective. It could be argued that all thee authors have addressed the underlying problems of the wars of the 1990s and are therefore dealing with issues that are subject to post-confl ict reconciliation, but that would be a stretch. The fi nal contribution comes from Lenard J. Cohen and draws on his book written with John R. Lampe Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans (2011). Here, the argument is that democratisation is a key ingredient in the process of reconciliation, and Cohen describes political developments in the region and their relation to the spread of the liberal democratic values adopted by the urban middle classes. He remains optimistic from his birds-eye view of politics in the Western Balkans; rather a contrast to certain of the contributors who are perhaps more sensitised to the political problems in the region. A bright ensemble of chapters of high quality, this volume does however read somewhat like a scholarly journal and so runs the risk of seeming att ractive only to scholars of post-confl ict reconciliation, whereas some of the less
冲突后社会的公民社会,他们评估了代顿(1995年)和奥赫里德(2001年)协议导致的波斯尼亚-黑塞哥维那和马其顿的权力分享。这两位作者得出了一个严峻但可以预见的结论,即政治制度和公民社会都很薄弱,需要国际行动者的支持,但他们同时认识到,这将破坏“地方所有权的基本原则”(210)。斯特凡诺·比安奇尼、弗拉基米尔·菲舍尔和伊恩·d·阿穆尔的贡献离题了,但写得很好,而且他们自己也很有趣。Bianchini讨论了危机时期民族主义的复苏,并可以在20世纪80年代南斯拉夫的经济危机中运用特别的专业知识。他声称,至少在进一步实施紧缩政策的情况下,欧盟也会出现类似于上世纪80年代南斯拉夫那样的民族主义倒退。根据他对20世纪80年代克罗地亚和塞尔维亚杂志的分析,费舍尔认为“从20世纪50年代开始,民族主义传统在南斯拉夫主义的框架内得到了迎合,而南斯拉夫主义本身就是一种新的、多元民族主义的民族主义”(71)。因此,当民族主义话语在1980年代在南斯拉夫占主导地位时,它是在一个已经提供民族类别的框架内。同时,armor呈现了19世纪下半叶奥匈帝国与塞尔维亚关系的历史记录,其重点是塞尔维亚历史学家Vasilije krestiki的工作。阿玛尔认为,克雷斯蒂奇“把除了塞尔维亚人以外的任何人都描绘成操纵者和霸权主义者”,这意味着塞尔维亚人是“无可指责的受害者”(107),并表明克雷斯蒂奇的工作是如何为塞尔维亚在该地区的外交利益服务的,而且这与克罗地亚人和双重君主制下的其他势力的政策相匹配,因此阿玛尔正确地看待了塞尔维亚人的受害者身份。有人可能会说,三位作者都论述了上世纪90年代战争的根本问题,因此都在处理冲突后和解所涉及的问题,但这是一种延伸。最后的贡献来自Lenard J. Cohen,并借鉴了他与John R. Lampe合著的《西巴尔干拥抱民主》(2011)一书。这里的论点是,民主化是和解过程中的一个关键因素,科恩描述了该地区的政治发展及其与城市中产阶级所采用的自由民主价值观传播的关系。从他对西巴尔干政治的鸟瞰来看,他仍然保持乐观;这与某些可能对该地区的政治问题更为敏感的撰稿人形成了鲜明对比。高质量的章节组成了一个明亮的整体,然而,这本书读起来有点像一本学术期刊,因此有可能只对冲突后和解的学者有吸引力,而一些不太具体的个别文章同样值得一看。总的来说,尽管个别章节本身都很有趣,但这本书确实缺乏凝聚力。
{"title":"Imaginary Trials","authors":"M. Oprel","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0022","url":null,"abstract":"civil society in post-confl ict societies, they evaluate the power-sharing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia that has resulted from the Dayton (1995) and Ohrid (2001) agreements. The authors reach the grim if predictable conclusion that both political systems and civil societies are weak and that support is needed from international actors, but they recognize that at the same time that would undermine ‘the very principles of local ownership’ (210). The contributions of Stefano Bianchini, Wladimir Fischer and Ian D. Armour are off -topic, but well writt en and interesting in their own right. Bianchini discusses the resurgence of nationalism in times of crisis and can deploy particular expertise on the economic crisis of the 1980s in Yugoslavia. He claims that for EU too there looms a similar retreat to nationalism as occurred in Yugoslavia during the 1980s, at least if further austerity policies are imposed. From his work based on the analysis of a selection of Croat and Serb magazines from the 1980s, Fischer argues that ‘from the 1950s onwards, nationalist traditions were catered to in the framework of Yugoslavism, which was itself nationalist in a new, multi-nationalist way’ (71). Hence, when nationalist discourse became dominant in Yugoslavia during the 1980s, it was within a framework that already provided for national categories. Armour meanwhile presents a historical account of Austro-Hungary-Serbia relations in the second half of the 19th century, with its focus on the work of the Serbian Historian Vasilije Krestić. Armour argues that Krestić’s ‘portrayal of anyone but the Serbs as manipulators and hegemonists’ implies that Serbs are ‘blameless victims’ (107) and shows how Krestić’s work serves the diplomatic interests of Serbia in the region and that it was matched by the policies of the Croats and other forces within the Dual Monarchy, thereby Armour places Serbian victimhood in perspective. It could be argued that all thee authors have addressed the underlying problems of the wars of the 1990s and are therefore dealing with issues that are subject to post-confl ict reconciliation, but that would be a stretch. The fi nal contribution comes from Lenard J. Cohen and draws on his book written with John R. Lampe Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans (2011). Here, the argument is that democratisation is a key ingredient in the process of reconciliation, and Cohen describes political developments in the region and their relation to the spread of the liberal democratic values adopted by the urban middle classes. He remains optimistic from his birds-eye view of politics in the Western Balkans; rather a contrast to certain of the contributors who are perhaps more sensitised to the political problems in the region. A bright ensemble of chapters of high quality, this volume does however read somewhat like a scholarly journal and so runs the risk of seeming att ractive only to scholars of post-confl ict reconciliation, whereas some of the less","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"267 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67295147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Romania, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the collapse of communism triggered a testimonial drive that shifted from early concerns with victimhood, justice, and retribution to seemingly apolitical revivals of everyday life under socialism. Drawing on a range of memoirs of socialist childhood published over the last decade by an aspiring generation of Romanian writers, this article examines the role of public intellectuals in articulating hegemonic representations of the socialist past. To understand both the enduring power and limits of such representations, the author argues that published recollections should not be read only for their (competing) perspectives on the past, but also for the sociopolitical effects they have in the transitional present, where they facilitate the socialization of emerging writers into the ethos of the postsocialist intelligentsia. Exploring the tenuous relationship between dominant intellectual discourses and social memory in postsocialist Romania, this article aims to throw light on the tensions at the heart of broader processes of democratization, diversification and commodification of social memory in Eastern Europe.
{"title":"Between Trauma and Nostalgia. The Intellectual Ethos and Generational Dynamics of Memory in Postsocialist Romania","authors":"G. Diana","doi":"10.1515/SOEU-2016-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/SOEU-2016-0026","url":null,"abstract":"In Romania, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the collapse of communism triggered a testimonial drive that shifted from early concerns with victimhood, justice, and retribution to seemingly apolitical revivals of everyday life under socialism. Drawing on a range of memoirs of socialist childhood published over the last decade by an aspiring generation of Romanian writers, this article examines the role of public intellectuals in articulating hegemonic representations of the socialist past. To understand both the enduring power and limits of such representations, the author argues that published recollections should not be read only for their (competing) perspectives on the past, but also for the sociopolitical effects they have in the transitional present, where they facilitate the socialization of emerging writers into the ethos of the postsocialist intelligentsia. Exploring the tenuous relationship between dominant intellectual discourses and social memory in postsocialist Romania, this article aims to throw light on the tensions at the heart of broader processes of democratization, diversification and commodification of social memory in Eastern Europe.","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"284-306"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/SOEU-2016-0026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67295248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article relies on the author’s own diary, kept between 1993 and 1994, in an effort to study how the violent breakup of Yugoslavia impacted identities of ordinary people. As it was written by a child from a mixed (Muslim-Croat) marriage, the diary, when properly analysed and contextualized, offers a way to study ethnicity as a process. In employing an unorthodox methodology in demonstrating how, as a 14-year-old, he was both marked as mixed and embraced Bosniak nationalism to the point of (risking) radicalization, the author moves the discussion of Yugoslav mixed marriages beyond the polarized and static portrayal hitherto characteristic of the debates around this topic.
{"title":"Confessions of a ‘Mixed Marriage Child’. Diary in the Study of Yugoslavia’s Breakup","authors":"Fedja Burić","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article relies on the author’s own diary, kept between 1993 and 1994, in an effort to study how the violent breakup of Yugoslavia impacted identities of ordinary people. As it was written by a child from a mixed (Muslim-Croat) marriage, the diary, when properly analysed and contextualized, offers a way to study ethnicity as a process. In employing an unorthodox methodology in demonstrating how, as a 14-year-old, he was both marked as mixed and embraced Bosniak nationalism to the point of (risking) radicalization, the author moves the discussion of Yugoslav mixed marriages beyond the polarized and static portrayal hitherto characteristic of the debates around this topic.","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"64 1","pages":"325 - 343"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67295343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
mands further alignment of fiscal policies and transfer of funds from core countries (northern Europe) of the EU to the periphery (southern Europe) in order to facilitate further convergence. Furthermore, Simitis explains the inability of the mentioned Troika to come up with more permanent solutions to the Greek debt crisis under political pressure from the different European member states. The European Council refused to provide debt relief in fear of losses for private banks that could potentially destabilise their own respective economies further than the global financial crisis already had. These are commonly held insights, but the focus on ‘the Greek case’ does make the policy-making and the relation between the EU institutions and national governments more tangible. As the book progresses, Simitis eventually showcases his vision for a more balanced EU framework. Simitis was a third-way social democrat during the 1990s, however in this book he first and foremost presents himself as a European minded politician, as is evident from the scarceness of ideologically coloured statements. He understands the limits of EU policy-makers; however he has enough political insight to criticise the EU technocrats. The first memorandum, which the Troika and Greece signed on 7 May 2010, was ‘a medicine with dangerous side effects’ according to Simitis (53). It imposed austerity without lightening the burden of public debt, thereby aggravating the crisis in Greece as well as in the EU. The crisis spread to Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, only emphasising the need for a European solution. Simitis argues that ‘despite the idiosyncratic qualities of the Greek problem, it did not constitute an isolated case’ (73). Rather, it resulted from the more basic shortcomings of the EMU. The first chapter of the final part of the book concludes the analysis of the Greek crisis, the second that of the European crisis. He synthesises his argument as: ‘Greece triggered the crisis in the Eurozone, but was not the cause of it. [...] The cause is inherent in the fact that the Eurozone is a full monetary union but an imperfect economic and fiscal union [...]; the mature economies of the European North differ significantly from the less mature economies of the South’ (322). In the final chapter, Simitis shows his true colours. He denounces the constrictive technocratic vision of conservative Europeans who have dominated the European Council and Commission since the referenda in 2005, when France and the Netherlands rejected the adoption of the European constitution. With this book, Simitis joins the call for ‘escaping forwards’, which means that the crisis should be used to advance ‘economic governance’ and ‘political union’ in the EU (338). The book is a consistent analysis of the Greek debt crisis and presents a progressive European perspective. A perspective that all too often seems to be lost amid the Euroscepticism and resulting conservatism surrounding the EU these days
{"title":"Der Balkan zwischen Ost und West. Mediale Bilder und kulturpolitische Prägungen","authors":"J. Fiedler","doi":"10.1515/soeu-2016-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2016-0038","url":null,"abstract":"mands further alignment of fiscal policies and transfer of funds from core countries (northern Europe) of the EU to the periphery (southern Europe) in order to facilitate further convergence. Furthermore, Simitis explains the inability of the mentioned Troika to come up with more permanent solutions to the Greek debt crisis under political pressure from the different European member states. The European Council refused to provide debt relief in fear of losses for private banks that could potentially destabilise their own respective economies further than the global financial crisis already had. These are commonly held insights, but the focus on ‘the Greek case’ does make the policy-making and the relation between the EU institutions and national governments more tangible. As the book progresses, Simitis eventually showcases his vision for a more balanced EU framework. Simitis was a third-way social democrat during the 1990s, however in this book he first and foremost presents himself as a European minded politician, as is evident from the scarceness of ideologically coloured statements. He understands the limits of EU policy-makers; however he has enough political insight to criticise the EU technocrats. The first memorandum, which the Troika and Greece signed on 7 May 2010, was ‘a medicine with dangerous side effects’ according to Simitis (53). It imposed austerity without lightening the burden of public debt, thereby aggravating the crisis in Greece as well as in the EU. The crisis spread to Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, only emphasising the need for a European solution. Simitis argues that ‘despite the idiosyncratic qualities of the Greek problem, it did not constitute an isolated case’ (73). Rather, it resulted from the more basic shortcomings of the EMU. The first chapter of the final part of the book concludes the analysis of the Greek crisis, the second that of the European crisis. He synthesises his argument as: ‘Greece triggered the crisis in the Eurozone, but was not the cause of it. [...] The cause is inherent in the fact that the Eurozone is a full monetary union but an imperfect economic and fiscal union [...]; the mature economies of the European North differ significantly from the less mature economies of the South’ (322). In the final chapter, Simitis shows his true colours. He denounces the constrictive technocratic vision of conservative Europeans who have dominated the European Council and Commission since the referenda in 2005, when France and the Netherlands rejected the adoption of the European constitution. With this book, Simitis joins the call for ‘escaping forwards’, which means that the crisis should be used to advance ‘economic governance’ and ‘political union’ in the EU (338). The book is a consistent analysis of the Greek debt crisis and presents a progressive European perspective. A perspective that all too often seems to be lost amid the Euroscepticism and resulting conservatism surrounding the EU these days","PeriodicalId":51954,"journal":{"name":"Sudosteuropa","volume":"59 1","pages":"426 - 429 - 504"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/soeu-2016-0038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67295871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article addresses trauma, its absence, and the creation of a collective memory among the contributors to the journal Symposion following the 1999 bombing of Serbia. By examining the group’s e-mails and conducting interviews with some of its members, it explores how their shared narrative patt erns constitute a mnemonic community, and asks what are the shared cultural frameworks that create a space for collective remembering within that community. The article argues that past and current politics of memory in Serbia have been built on discourses of a victimized nation and therefore do not recognize the specifi c ethnic, class or gender positions of individuals as they were during the bombing. Conversely, the national discourse on memorializing the bombing fails to articulate individual experiences and commemorative practices. This article therefore aims to present and analyse some of them. Krisztina Rácz is a PhD candidate at the Balkan Studies program of the University of Ljubljana and works at the Regional Science Center of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Novi Sad, Serbia. The Context of the Bombing Like quite a large number of other Serbian citizens, especially those of Hungarian ethnicity, I spent the days of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia mainly in Hungary. However, as a woman I was allowed to travel across the border, so I made a number of visits to my home in Zrenjanin during that time. Zrenjanin was not bombed, so neither I nor most of my friends had any direct experience of being bombed, for most of my friends too lived in Vojvodina in smaller towns and villages that were not targeted by air raids. Yet, I felt, their experience, even though their lives were not in immediate danger, was profoundly diff erent from mine, if for no other reason than that they were all potential targets. Yet, my curiosity about their experience was not satisfi ed. I did not really learn from my friends how it felt to expect a ‘siege from the sky’ night after night. Instead of stories of trauma and fear, I heard about parties in the shelters and in illegal pubs, alcohol and drug use, and social gatherings I was unfortunate to have missed. Surprisingly, at least on the face of it, the e-mails published in Südosteuropa 64 (2016), no. 4, pp. 520-543 MEMORIES AND NARRATIVES OF THE 1999 NATO BOMBING 521 Trauma or Entertainment? Collective Memories the journal Symposion and which I read shortly after were not much diff erent from the stories I had heard from my friends. I was curious about the traces the experience of the bombing had left in those who had witnessed it and how it had diff erentiated them from those like me who had not had the same experience. Was the bombing a traumatic event or rather a period of fun, as I have often heard it described? Were those who experienced it victims, even if their lives were not directly endangered? Could we, who were not in the country but who cared for many people who were there, understand? In 2
这篇文章讨论了创伤、创伤的缺失,以及1999年塞尔维亚轰炸后《交响曲》杂志撰稿人的集体记忆的创造。通过检查该组织的电子邮件和对其成员的采访,它探索了他们共同的叙述模式如何构成一个记忆共同体,并询问在该共同体中创造集体记忆空间的共同文化框架是什么。这篇文章认为,塞尔维亚过去和现在的记忆政治都是建立在受害民族的话语之上,因此不承认个人在轰炸期间的特定种族、阶级或性别立场。相反,关于纪念轰炸的国家话语未能阐明个人经历和纪念实践。因此,本文旨在介绍和分析其中的一些。Krisztina Rácz是卢布尔雅那大学巴尔干研究项目的博士候选人,在塞尔维亚诺维萨德哲学与社会理论研究所的区域科学中心工作。1999年北约轰炸南斯拉夫期间,我和很多其他塞尔维亚公民,尤其是匈牙利裔一样,主要是在匈牙利度过的。然而,作为一名女性,我被允许穿越边境,所以在那段时间里,我多次回我在兹伦雅宁的家。Zrenjanin没有被轰炸,所以我和我的大多数朋友都没有被轰炸的直接经历,因为我的大多数朋友也住在伏伊伏丁那省的小城镇和村庄,那里没有空袭的目标。然而,我觉得,他们的经历,即使他们的生命没有立即处于危险之中,也与我的截然不同,如果没有别的原因,他们都是潜在的目标。然而,我对他们的经历的好奇心并没有得到满足,我并没有真正从我的朋友那里了解到夜复一夜地期待着“从天而降的围攻”是什么感觉。我听到的不是创伤和恐惧的故事,而是收容所和非法酒吧里的派对,酗酒和吸毒,以及我不幸错过的社交聚会。令人惊讶的是,至少从表面上看,发表在<s:1> dosteuropa 64(2016)上的电子邮件,没有。1999年北约轰炸的记忆和叙述521创伤或娱乐?《集体记忆》、《交响乐》杂志和我不久之后读到的那篇文章,与我从朋友那里听到的故事没有太大区别。我很好奇爆炸的经历在那些亲历者身上留下的痕迹,以及这些痕迹如何将他们与像我这样没有同样经历的人区别开来。爆炸是一个创伤事件,还是像我经常听到的那样,是一段快乐的时光?那些经历过它的人是受害者吗,即使他们的生命没有直接受到威胁?我们虽然不在这个国家,但我们关心那里的许多人,能理解吗?2008年,我分析了发表在《sympossion》上的104封匿名电子邮件,这些邮件是在诺维萨德、苏博蒂察、ba<e:1>卡托波拉、马里Iđoš、托恩约什、桑塔、斯塔莫拉维卡、Čantavir以及该省的其他城镇和村庄撰写和发送的,我还对其中的15位作者进行了半结构化的采访(12位亲自采访,3位通过电子邮件采访),他们在轰炸发生的日子里在塞尔维亚度过,还有一些从匈牙利与他们通信的人。访谈提出了诸如日常活动、保持联系的人以及沟通方式等话题;他们还对作者对那段时期的记忆提出了广泛的质疑。2013年,我重新审视了这个话题,并对两位最初的对话者进行了后续采访,这次是对他们进行拍摄。从电子邮件的话语分析中得出的结论是访谈的基础。访谈的总体目的是为我的研究提供一个更广泛的背景;当回到这个话题时,我提供了重新考虑我最初关于助记术社区的创建,它的集体记忆和创伤在其中的位置的一些想法的可能性。我从那些知道我在处理这个话题的人们那里收到了大量的兴趣和反馈,这使我意识到,自爆炸发生以来,记忆轰炸在塞尔维亚一直是一个令人烦恼的问题然而,直到最近,它才开始进入主流公共话语。所有电子邮件均于1999年3月25日至6月10日期间发出,并刊登于第。《交响乐》杂志第6卷第24-25页,作为两页中间的专栏。他们已被匿名,指示“从:somebody@word.com到:somebody@word”。 因此,发件人和收件人是无法识别的,唯一可以区分电子邮件的是它们发送的日期和时间(在匈牙利语中,人称代词是中性的,因此在大多数情况下,甚至作者的性别都是不公开的)。由于这个原因,参考文献包括电子邮件发送的日期和时间以及可以找到它们的期刊页面。我非常感谢我在2013年维也纳人文科学研究所(IWM)的“东欧面孔”研讨会和“1999年北约轰炸”上的研究报告中收到的同事们的评论和反馈。2015年在贝尔格莱德举办的“记忆、叙事和历史”研讨会。我要特别感谢Natalie Smolenski、Orli friedman、János Mátyás Kovács和已故的aleis Debeljak提出的宝贵见解。
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test that communist-era actors have been prevalent and important in both the political and judicial fi elds. Hein explains the transition in Romania by using the concept of ‘patrimonialism’, manifested in a ‘highly personalised, authoritarian, or semi-authoritarian regime’ (324). In both Romania and Bulgaria, Hein observes how the judicial institutions at all levels were constantly subject to political interventions, and yet the new constitutional practice was nevertheless continuous, thanks to the adherence to the law by some of the relevant actors. He grants that the political organization in Bulgaria was more stable than in confl ict-ridden Romania. Progressively, in both cases, the impetus to eff ect essential changes manifested itself in the desire to join the EU. For both nations, the author off ers a careful account of the legal struggles against the political background of each country, showing how their constitutional expansions refl ected broader political contexts. Hein points out that in the constitutional developments of both countries, foreign consultants exerted a signifi cant eff ect to ensure the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, particularly in view of EU membership conditions during the accession process. In light of certain proceedings that many today would prefer to forget, the transformation of power in Romania in 2004 and the election of Băsescu as president meant a break with the enormous politicisation of the judiciary by the Iliescu government between 2000 and 2004. Minister of Justice Stănoiu replaced almost all of the prosecutors assigned to investigating corruption and the events of December 1989; he suspended the implementation of verdicts against former army generals with regard to the order to shoot in December 1989; and he cancelled rulings related to the return of property. Judicial salaries were frozen in order to intimidate members of the apparatus, resulting in increased susceptibility to corruption. PSD Prime Minister Năstase publicly called for a pro-government law that completely shut down the legal fi ght against corruption. Hein refers to ‘a comprehensive re-politicisation of law enforcement, judicial and self-management activities of the judiciary’. He calls this phase the obscurest era of the judiciary in postcommunist Romania (358). The issue of the ‘suspicion of self-promotion of the political elite’ (445) after 1990 is discussed again and again. Hein convincingly concludes that in both countries the ‘effi ciency and consistent independence of the judiciary institutions remain precarious’ (462). The author presents a content-rich study that is analytically, argumentatively, and stylistically of the fi rst order, which would merit publication in Romanian and Bulgarian as well. Indeed, this is one of the fi rst thorough, knowledgeable, and balanced presentations of intertwined legal and political developments in postsocialist Eastern Europe.
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I spent my sabbatical year at the American Research Center in Sofia during the 25th anniversary of what Bulgarians call ‘the changes’ of 1989. In the time since 2014, Bulgarians have been actively questioning the political, economic, and social systems that emerged from the wreckage of the communist experiment. In 2014, political protests were omnipresent as I walked to the central state archives on Moskovska Street, eating banitsa and drinking strong coffee. Some of my favourite moments of the year were spent talking to these protesters about the nature of the liberal democratic capitalist project—bought and sold as a new and improved form of modernity. Generally, the people I spoke with were displeased (they were protesters after all). Toward the end of my time in Bulgaria, one of these protesters accompanied my family to the ‘picnic of freedom’, held in Borisova gradina in Sofia to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the collapse of communism. As Zheliu Zhelev, the first postsocialist president of Bulgaria (for whom I have a great deal of respect), continued to hold forth about the transition and the arrival of freedom in the face of tyranny, my friend leaned over and hissed, ‘What kind of freedom is this?’ The specter of communism (the literal, afterlife specter) continues to haunt Southeastern Europe. The papers in this special section of Südosteuropa all explore the experiences of people living after the collapse of communism—the ways in which matters of identity and place can be constructed and understood in a world transformed. At their root, these questions—of how space is claimed, how life is explained, and how meaning is to be found—are historiographical. They seek to trace beginnings and identify a direction for the future. In the stories of life in Bulgaria after the changes, the absence of communism is overwhelmingly present. The authors of the essays presented here ultimately ask: how do we live after the fall? Südosteuropa 64 (2016), no. 3, pp. 277-283
我在索菲亚的美国研究中心(American Research Center)度过了我的休假年,当时正值保加利亚人所说的1989年“变革”25周年。自2014年以来,保加利亚人一直在积极质疑从共产主义实验的残骸中产生的政治、经济和社会制度。2014年,当我走到莫斯科街(Moskovska Street)的中央国家档案馆(central state archives)时,政治抗议无处不在,我一边吃着巴尼察(banitsa),一边喝着浓咖啡。一年中,我最喜欢的一些时刻是与这些抗议者谈论自由民主资本主义项目的本质——作为一种新的、改进的现代性形式进行买卖。总的来说,与我交谈的人都不高兴(毕竟他们是抗议者)。我在保加利亚的时间快结束时,其中一名抗议者陪同我的家人参加了在索非亚的Borisova gradina举行的“自由野餐”,以庆祝共产主义崩溃25周年。保加利亚后社会主义时代的第一任总统热留·热列夫(Zheliu Zhelev)(我非常尊敬他)继续滔滔不绝地谈论过渡和暴政下自由的到来,我的朋友俯下身来,低声问道:“这是什么自由?”共产主义的幽灵(字面意思,死后的幽灵)继续困扰着东南欧。《多斯特欧罗巴》这一特殊部分的论文都探讨了共产主义崩溃后人们的生活经历——在一个转型的世界中,身份和地方问题可以被构建和理解的方式。从根本上说,这些问题——如何占有空间,如何解释生活,以及如何找到意义——都是史学问题。他们试图追根溯源,确定未来的方向。在保加利亚变革后的生活故事中,共产主义的缺席是压倒性的存在。这些文章的作者最终提出的问题是:人类堕落后我们该如何生活?文件编号: dosteuropa 64 (2016);3,第277-283页
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