Download or read book Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989 written by Sabrina P. Ramet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-18 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only textbook to provide a complete introduction to post-1989 Central and Southeast European politics, this dynamic volume provides a comprehensive account of the collapse of communism and the massive transformation that the region has witnessed. It brings together 23 leading specialists to trace the course of the dramatic changes accompanying democratization. The text provides country-by-country coverage, identifying common themes and enabling students to see which are shared throughout the area, giving them a sense of its unity and comparability whilst strengthening understanding around its many different trajectories. The dual thematic focus on democratization and Europeanization running through the text also helps to reinforce this learning process. Each chapter contains a factual overview to give the reader context concerning the region which will be useful for specialists and newcomers to the subject alike.

Download or read book State Construction and Art in East Central Europe 1918 2018 written by Agnieszka Chmielewska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-19 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a comprehensive perspective on the relationship between the art scene and agencies of the state in countries of the region, throughout four consecutive yet highly diverse historical periods: from the period of state integration after World War I, through the communist era post 1945 and the time of political transformation after 1989, to the present-day globalisation (including counter-reactions to westernisation and cultural homogenisation). With twenty-three theoretically and/or empirically oriented articles by authors from sixteen countries (East Central Europe and beyond, including the United States and Australia), the book discusses interconnections between state policies and artistic institutions, trends and the art market from diverse research perspectives. The contributors explore subjects such as the impact of war on the formation of national identities, the role of artists in image-building for the new national states emerging after 1918, the impact of political systems on artists’ attitudes, the discourses of art history, museum studies, monument conservation and exhibition practices. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural politics, cultural history, and East Central European studies and history.

Download or read book Developments in Central and East European Politics 5 written by Stephen White and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of this market-leading text brings together specially commissioned chapters by a team of top international scholars on the changing politics of this diverse region negotiating the competing pulls of the European Union and post-communist Russia.

Download or read book European Integration written by Johann P. Arnason and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To understand the current difficulties and future prospects of European integration, multiple perspectives are required. The essays in this collection explore historical and geopolitical aspects of European integration and their relevance to interpretations of the current climate. They also examine the different regional dynamics of integration and the attitudes that result from those experiences, including in the European peripheries that are so often overshadowed by the dominant centres. In drawing all of these perspectives together, the collection allows the reader to assess the EU's current crisis in context.

Download or read book The Western Balkans written by Milan Bufon and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Great Cauldron written by Marie-Janine Calic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of southeastern Europe from antiquity to the present that reveals it to be a vibrant crossroads of trade, ideas, and religions. We often think of the Balkans as a region beset by turmoil and backwardness, but from late antiquity to the present it has been a dynamic meeting place of cultures and religions. Combining deep insight with narrative flair, The Great Cauldron invites us to reconsider the history of this intriguing, diverse region as essential to the story of global Europe. Marie-Janine Calic reveals the many ways in which southeastern Europe’s position at the crossroads of East and West shaped continental and global developments. The nascent merchant capitalism of the Mediterranean world helped the Balkan knights fight the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. The deep pull of nationalism led a young Serbian bookworm to spark the conflagration of World War I. The late twentieth century saw political Islam spread like wildfire in a region where Christians and Muslims had long lived side by side. Along with vivid snapshots of revealing moments in time, including Krujë in 1450 and Sarajevo in 1984, Calic introduces fascinating figures rarely found in standard European histories. We meet the Greek merchant and poet Rhigas Velestinlis, whose revolutionary pamphlet called for a general uprising against Ottoman tyranny in 1797. And the Croatian bishop Ivan Dominik Stratiko, who argued passionately for equality of the sexes and whose success with women astonished even his friend Casanova. Calic’s ambitious reappraisal expands and deepens our understanding of the ever-changing mixture of peoples, faiths, and civilizations in this much-neglected nexus of empire.

Download or read book Religion as Securitization in Central and Eastern Europe written by András Máté-Tóth and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-18 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion as Securitization in Central and Eastern Europe examines the significance of securitization theory as a reference point in understanding current religious, socio-cultural, and political processes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores contemporary social processes and discourses on security linked to religion and religious institutions. CEE has experienced many confluences of security issues with religious interpretations and world views. For instance, the international refugee and migration crisis could not be separated from the counterpoint between Christianity and Islam in political discussions. Similarly, the debates on LGBT family recognition and the traditional family model are inseparable from the “Christian family” as a reference point. The security needs of the region are particularly acute trigger points, which can be instrumentalized by political power. In other words, the threat sensitivities of collective identity make the region particularly well suited to being a focus of securitization, both from the host side and from the discourses that are enforced from above. In this volume, the authors approach the validity of securitization in relation to religion, and religion itself as securitization, from a broader perspective. They show not only what religious facts and aspects have become threatening in the process of securitization but also that the function of religion in the CEE region can be described and understood primarily as securitization. This unique collection of studies offers a comprehensive theoretical and methodological approach, while the case studies are drawn from more than seven countries in the region, by leading scholars. The book will be of interest to scholars from a wide range of disciplines including political science, history, anthropology, and religious studies. It will also function as an important introductory work for students to this specific area of research.

Download or read book The European Handbook of Central Asian Studies written by Jeroen Fauve, Adrien De Cordier, B. J. Van Den Bosch and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 1064 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook is the first collection of comprehensive teaching materials for teachers and students of Central Asian Studies (CAS) with a strong pedagogic dimension. It presents 22 chapters, clustered around five themes, with contributions from more than 19 scholars, all leading experts in the field of CAS and Eurasian Studies. This collection is not only a reference work for scholars branching out to different disciplines of CAS but also for scholars from other disciplines broadening their scope to CAS. It addresses post-colonial frameworks and also untangles topics from their ‘Soviet’ reference frame. It aims to de-exoticize the region and draws parallels to European or to historically European-occupied territories. In each chapter, the handbook provides a concise but nuanced overview of the topics covered, in which way these have been approached by the mainstream literature, and points out pitfalls, myths, and new insights, providing background knowledge about Central Asia to readers and intertwine this with an advanced level of insight to leave the readers equipped with a strong foundation to approach more specialized sources either in classroom settings or by self-study. In addition, the book offers a comprehensive glossary, list of used abbreviations, overview of intended learning outcomes, and a smart index (distinguishing between names, locations, concepts, and events). A list of recorded lectures to be found on YouTube will accompany the handbook either as instruction materials for teachers or visual aids for students. Since the authors themselves recorded the lectures related to their own chapters, this provides the opportunity to engage in a more personalized way with the authors. This project is being developed in the framework of the EISCAS project (www.eiscas.eu), co-funded by the Erasmus + Program of the European Union.

Download or read book The Geopolitics of Regional Power written by Sören Scholvin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades, various states from the Global South have emerged as important players in international relations. Most popular among them is China. Brazil, India and South Africa have also taken essential roles in global and regional politics. Compared to traditional great powers, they can be labelled ’regional great powers’ or ’regional powers’ because their influence is - with the exception of China - concentrated on their neighbourhood. The impact of regions, meaning the impact of geography, on the economics and politics of regional powers is surprisingly understudied. This book analyses how geographical conditions influence the regional economics and politics of South Africa, allowing the author to delineate its region of influence.

Download or read book Insight Turkey Winter 2021 New Geopolitics in The Eastern Mediterranean written by and published by SET Vakfı İktisadi İşletmesi. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After being the focal point of the regional and global power competition for centuries, the Eastern Mediterranean region has recently re-emerged as a point of convergence in international politics. Over the last two decades, especially, many regional and global powers have begun to develop strategies toward the Eastern Mediterranean leading to a fierce rivalry amongst them. There are several reasons for the increase in the political, strategic, and economic importance of the region. However, four are especially noteworthy, and while two are long-standing factors, there are two significant novel developments that have contributed to the re-emergence of the strategic importance of the region. First, the main deep-seated reason stems from its geostrategic and geopolitical importance. The Eastern Mediterranean hosts some of the most strategic seaways in the world, such as the Suez Canal and the Turkish Straits. While the Suez Canal has served as the main sea passage bridging the East to the West since its opening in 1869, the Turkish Straits (the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles) has for centuries connected the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea and so the Atlantic Ocean. Second, due to its strategic importance the Eastern Mediterranean region has always been one of the most penetrated regions in the world. Many global and regional powers such as the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Saudi Arabia continue to intervene into regional affairs resulting in power struggles. While the U.S. is trying to maintain its superiority in the region following the Cold War period, Russia aims to reach the warm seas, its long-time strategic objective. On the other hand, the UK, France, and Turkey are working to protect their historical and imperial links with the region. Starting with President Obama, the U.S. has followed a retrenchment policy which has resulted in power vacuums in different regions including the Eastern Mediterranean. Under these circumstances the Western-dominated regional system and political stability has changed dramatically, and the power vacuum created after the U.S. downsized its regional role is filled by many other challenger states. One of these states is Russia which seems to have settled itself into the region permanently. From now on, it will be quite difficult to extricate Russia from the region and without doubt it will continue to pose a threat from the south to European countries. China is another actor that has gained a foothold in the region lately by improving its relations with some regional countries and by investing in the control of significant seaports. Furthermore, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have also started trying to influence the regional balance of power. Consequently, all the cards are reshuffled in the Eastern Mediterranean and a new great game is underway in the region. Third, as the most significant novel development, the exploration of natural gas in the region has contributed to its geostrategic importance. Considered as one of the richest deposits with approximately 4.5 percent of the total natural gas reserves in the world, the Eastern Mediterranean has become of great interest to the energy market. The drilling activities performed to date show that essential portions of the reserves range from the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields, where the coasts of Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel meet, to the West Nile Delta field along the Egyptian coast. Within this framework, the regional and global powers have turned their attention to the region once again as the newly discovered rich energy resources have entered into the equation as a new parameter. Israel is the first state that discovered natural gas in Tamar (318 billion cubic meter) and Leviathan (605 billion cubic meter) fields and began to use and export it to other countries. Egypt and the Greek Administration of Southern Cyprus (GASC) also discovered natural gas in the Zohr (850 billion cubic meter) field and Aphrodite (129 billion cubic meter) field, respectively. Furthermore, lately, a considerable amount of gas reserves was discovered in the Calypso and Glaucus fields located in the South of Cyprus. As new discoveries continue, other countries such as Turkey have been conducting offshore drilling activities to explore natural gas. All these activities have defrosted the longtime frozen problems of the region. The region is not rich only in terms of offshore natural gas reserves. It is known that some areas within the boundaries of Egypt and Libya are also rich in natural gas. Having the Wafa and Bouri gas fields, Libya is ranked 22nd in the world with around 1.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves. Egypt ranks as 16th in the world, with the Zohr, West Nile Delta, and Atoll fields yielding a total of around 2.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. It must be said that the reason many global and regional players have become involved in the Libyan civil war is closely related to its abundant energy resources. Furthermore, it is important to state that the Eastern Mediterranean is quite rich in terms of crude oil as well. Considering onshore and offshore reserves together, the region possesses nearly 3.7 percent of the world’s total oil reserves with around 64 billion barrels discovered to date. Libya alone has nearly 3.2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, with roughly 48.4 billion barrels, and Egypt has around 3.3 billion barrels of known oil reserves. Fourth, besides the three protracted crises, namely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the political crisis in Lebanon, and the Cyprus question, two more recent regional political issues, the Syrian and Libyan crises, have been attracting the attention of many regional and global powers. The external involvement of some new actors in these crises has led to a new power struggle. Turkey and Russia are the two main states that have increased their presence in the region lately by becoming the two main powers involved in the Syrian and Libyan crises. Needless to state, their military intervention in these crises has undermined the status of the traditional Western colonial powers, such as France. As a country that has the longest shores in the Eastern Mediterranean and as one of the main players in regional geopolitics, Turkey has begun to increase its military presence in the region in order to deter anti-Turkish developments. The geography has begun to occupy a critical role in Turkey’s political, security, and economic policies, and eventually has become one of the most featured parameters in Turkish foreign policy. Turkey’s regional policy is shaped by a number of factors. First of all, the Eastern Mediterranean has long-standing importance for Turkey, which has historical ties with almost all regional states. For centuries the region was ruled by Turkey’s predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, Turkey’s involvement in regional crises such as Libya, Syria, and Palestine can be partially explained by the historical ties between Turkey and these states. Second, the Eastern Mediterranean plays a crucial role in Turkey’s security and as a result Turkey’s foreign policy towards the region is highly shaped by its security concerns. Therefore, the policies of global powers such as the U.S., the European Union, and Russia towards the region are intrinsically linked to Turkey’s security. As all these actors pursue their own national interests, it has resulted in the U.S., EU, and Russia conflicting with Turkey’s policies and expectations in the region. This has become clear on issues such as the Cyprus problem and the attempts of the Greek side to sign international agreements regarding the maritime jurisdiction zones. Both of these developments aim at eliminating Turkey’s influence over the island and the region altogether. However, Turkey has made it clear that this is not something that it will accept, and has responded by signing agreements with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Libya, in 2011 and 2019 respectively. Third, the Eastern Mediterranean is critical both for its abundant energy resources and for the bilateral economic relations between Turkey and the countries of the region; therefore, the economy is another factor determining Turkish policy towards the region. Turkey, an energy-dependent country that expects to discover new resources in its continental shelf, considers the rich hydrocarbon potential of the region as an alternative source of meeting its energy demands. Turkey seeks to both decrease its foreign dependence on energy and to increase its trade, first with neighboring countries and then with the world. In this regard, when forming its Eastern Mediterranean policy, Turkey is, on the one hand, intensely searching for natural gas and oil on its continental shelf and following policies towards transferring the resources found in other countries’ maritime zones to the Western markets through Turkey, and, on the other hand, trying to improve its relations with the countries in the region. The developments that threaten Turkey’s economic and security interests have urged Ankara to a closer involvement with the region. Tensions have risen with Greece’s eagerness to give its islands maritime jurisdiction zones beyond their territorial waters, which will cut into Turkey’s continental shelf and the GASC’s licensing of maritime blocks to international companies for energy research activities. Violating the TRNC and Turkey’s rights, and, with the aim of making their illegal actions permanent, their signing of agreements in close cooperation with Israel, Egypt, and the U.S., as well as conducting joint military operations will not contribute to the resolution of the problems. Within this framework, this issue of Insight Turkey highlights different affairs regarding the Eastern Mediterranean region. A number of leading and well-known intellectuals and academicians have contributed to this issue focusing on political, legal, and energy dimensions of maritime tensions and the rise of a new geopolitics in the region. This issue includes pieces that look at the Eastern Mediterranean tensions through the lens of international law. Ayfer Erdoğan’s research article examines the legal and political dimensions of the disputes by analyzing the standpoints of the main actor’s in the region. Meanwhile, the commentary written by Sertaç Hami Başeren reviews their justifications with reference to international law, with particular reference to Turkey’s actions. Furthermore, based on the principle that maritime delimitation should be carried out to reach an equitable solution by taking all the relevant circumstances into account, Yücel Acer argues that Turkey has developed a comprehensive legal approach as to the maritime delimitation in the Eastern Mediterranean and even submitted a map to the UN to demonstrate Turkey’s claimed continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) areas. While keeping up with the recent developments in the United States, Nurşin Ateşoğlu Güney and Vişne Korkmaz’s research article examines how and why Washington has come to embrace the logic of ‘Alliance Axis’ to shape the Eastern Mediterranean and explores the projected impact of the U.S.-initiated Abraham Accords on regional geopolitics. Meanwhile, Muhammad Soliman Alzawawy’s commentary aims to forecast the route and different scenarios that the new American President Joe Biden will take in his foreign policy towards the Eastern Mediterranean region through investigating the content of his speeches and rhetoric before and shortly after taking office. Galip Emre Yıldırım highlights the stance of another actor in the region by arguing that France’s identification of Turkey as an ‘external enemy’ reflects the former’s political and economic concerns with regard to the Mediterranean gas reserves. Sohbet Karbuz gives an overview of the key commercial, technical, legal, and political challenges the East Mediterranean gas faces, with a critical eye and proposes possible ways to overcome them. Karbuz discusses the challenges facing the monetization of the discoveries by looking at both the commercial challenges hampering the exploration and field development activities and the technical challenges for exporting gas to the immediate and distant markets. In addition to these eight pieces focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean, there are some insightful manuscripts on a range of topics regarding the recent developments in the international political arena. With regard to the recent changes at the level of the white house, Inderjeet Parmar analyses President Donald Trump’s attempted coup. Parmar also questions the political will of the new President to extirpate Trumpism and white supremacy from the U.S. body politic. After three-and-a-half-years into the crisis that struck the heart of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Marwan Kabalan sheds light on how the 41st Gulf Summit in the Saudi city of al-Ula, brought the blockade of Qatar to an end. From our off-topic research articles, Nikolay Kozhanov tries to prove the importance of the economic factors for the current development of Russia’s relations with the Gulf States. He also assesses the prospects for continued economic cooperation between the GCC states and Moscow. Ramazan Erdağ’s article concludes this issue with a discussion on why Russia replaced the South Stream project with the TurkStream by changing its route and name, and why Turkey is involved in a project on the North-South line although it plays a vital role in the Trans-Anatolia Natural Gas Pipeline Project in the southern gas corridor. While the importance of the region certainly is going to increase in the following years as more regional and global actors will be included in the power struggle, it is necessary to analyze and understand the issue from geopolitical, economic and legal standpoints. With that said, we are confident that this issue of Insight Turkey entitled “New Geopolitics in the Eastern Mediterranean” will provide timely studies regarding the Turkish perspective on a complex and increasingly important issue in the global power struggle.

Download or read book Handbook of Regional Conflict Resolution Initiatives in the Global South written by Jeronimo Delgado-Caicedo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first half of the twentieth century, the international system was largely dominated by the USA and the colonial powers of western Europe. After the two world wars, the political and economic dominance of these states guaranteed them and their allies an almost complete control of world politics. However, as it is the norm in the international system, power structures are not immutable. After the end of the Cold War, rapid changes to the existing international hierarchies took place, as new countries from the so-called ‘‘developing world’’ began to emerge as crucial actors capable of questioning and altering the power dynamics of the world. It is therefore unthinkable to ignore emerging countries such as Russia, the People’s Republic of China, India, Brazil or South Africa in the decision-making process in today’s world order. In addition, there is a group of smaller, yet increasingly important countries that, while acknowledging their inability radically to change the rules of the international system, are still eager to shift power relations and enhance their influence in the world. Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Vietnam are generally recognised as part of this grouping of emerging powers from the Global South. While there is a consensus amongst academics that emerging powers from the Global South must have a stabilising role within their own regions, previous analyses have focused primarily on the impact that emerging powers have had in their own regions’ conflict resolution initiatives. This volume, instead, aims to go beyond these analyses and provide new insights regarding the effect that this stabilising role has on the continental and global positioning of emerging powers. In other words, this book explores the relation between a country’s involvement in conflict resolution initiatives and its positioning in the international system. The volume will contribute to this approach using the perspective of academics and practitioners from countries of the Global South, particularly from states that have strengthened - or sometimes weakened - their position in the international hierarchy of power through a leading role in regional conflict resolution initiatives.

Download or read book 1989 written by James Mark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Placing Eastern Europe in a global context, this provides new perspectives on the political, economic, and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century.

Download or read book The International Politics of Eurasia v 4 The Making of Foreign Policy in Russia and the New States of Eurasia written by S. Frederick Starr and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious ten-volume series develops a comprehensive analysis of the evolving world role of the post-Soviet successor states. Each volume considers a different factor influencing the relationship between internal politics and international relations in Russia and in the western and southern tiers of newly independent states. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the discrediting of Marxism-Leninism as a source of political legitimacy have prompted a search for fresh principles of political organization that will shape the nature of political culture in all the post-Soviet countries. This volume looks at the making of foreign policy in Russia and the new states of Eurasia.

Download or read book Public Policy and the New European Agendas written by Fergus Carr and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This broad and all-encompassing study focuses on Europe s new policy agendas. It brings together international academic experts on a range of policies to discuss Europe s place in the world and its relationship to the USA and beyond. This book concentrates on two key themes of particular salience for policy makers: the enlargement of the EU and the place of Europe in international politics. An expansive list of important policy areas within these themes is explored, including: enlargement political and constitutional implications and international socialization of central and eastern Europe Europe and the USA: security and defence policy, trade, finance and development institutional development and external relations in justice and home affairs before and after September 11 international terrorism, EU immigration and asylum and borders policy human rights and civil rights agriculture, environmental policy and regional policy pensions and ageing in Europe. This book constitutes a major contribution to achieving a deeper understanding of European integration and the barriers to integration within the context of global and multi-level governance. As such, it will be of enormous interest to an extensive audience including academics, researchers, students, policy makers and practitioners in the fields of political studies, international relations, public policy, European studies, US studies and security studies.

Download or read book Domains and Divisions of European History written by Johann P. Arnason and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The patterns of unity and division that define Europe as a historical region have been discussed in many seminal works, but the complex set of questions behind its domains and divisions merits a more sustained debate. The disappearance of the cold war, the enlargement of the European Union, and core issues of historical sociology all require an exploration of the structures and boundaries of historical formations, as well as the question of European unity. This volume tackles the topic of the divisions that have shaped European history head-on, as leading scholars in the field negotiate such issues as regional identity, geographical boundaries, divisional labeling, and post–cold war European unity.

Download or read book History of the Literary Cultures of East Central Europe written by Marcel Cornis-Pope and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-09-13 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the work undertaken in Vol. 1 of the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, Vol. 2 considers various topographic sites—multicultural cities, border areas, cross-cultural corridors, multiethnic regions—that cut across national boundaries, rendering them permeable to the flow of hybrid cultural messages. By focusing on the literary cultures of specific geographical locations, this volume intends to put into practice a new type of comparative study. Traditional comparative literary studies establish transnational comparisons and contrasts, but thereby reconfirm, however inadvertently, the very national borders they play down. This volume inverts the expansive momentum of comparative studies towards ever-broader regional, European, and world literary histories. While the theater of this volume is still the literary culture of East-Central Europe, the contributors focus on pinpointed local traditions and geographic nodal points. Their histories of Riga, Plovdiv, Timişoara or Budapest, of Transylvania or the Danube corridor – to take a few examples – reveal how each of these sites was during the last two-hundred years a home for a variety of foreign or ethnic literary traditions next to the one now dominant within the national borders. By foregrounding such non-national or hybrid traditions, this volume pleads for a diversification and pluralization of local and national histories. A genuine comparatist revival of literary history should involve the recognition that “treading on native grounds” means actually treading on grounds cultivated by diverse people.

Download or read book On the East West Slope written by Attila Melegh and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melegh's work offers a powerful analysis of the sociological and symbolic meanings of East-West in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Melegh exposes the underbelly of liberal characterizations of East-West, highlighting the polarizing effect of extreme nationalism and ethnic racism. The theoretical underpinnings of this work involve the ideas of preeminent theorists such as Karl Mannheim, Michel Foucault and more recently Maria Todorova and Iver Neumann. The importance of this work lies in its ability to cast into fine relief how the "East-West Slope" oriented negatively from West to East has emerged from liberal characterizations of this project. In addition this is one of the first attempts to link post-colonial analysis to developments in Eastern Europe.