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Symbolic Geographies and Visions of Identity

A Balkan Perspective

CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, SOFIA, BULGARIA, mishkova{at}cas.bg

The aim of this article is to interrogate the current mainstream interpretation of the relations between the Balkans and the West by exploring the agencies of the transmission of knowledge through which the Balkans became familiar with the West. Interest is focused on how concepts about `us' and the `other', cultural and social self-definitions were historically mediated by concepts of Europe. Issues of cultural transfer form a point of departure, in this sense suggesting that Balkan visions of Europe cannot be understood as simply mirroring the representations of the Western hegemonic discourse about the Balkans. In order to understand these visions, more attention needs to be paid to local and regional dynamics in the production of ideologies and self-narrations.

Key Words: Balkan studies • cultural transfer • Europeanism • Occidentalism • Orientalism • symbolic geography

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 2, 237-256 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1368431007087476


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