What is it about?
This chapter is part of the Series Southeast European Integration Perspectives vol.13 published by Nomos Verlag. This collaborative work explains to postgraduate and graduate students the sources and continuities of ethno-religious nationalism in the Western Balkans.
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Why is it important?
We use a structural and historical perspective to highlight stalled processes of modernization in the region, which have made it difficult for civic nationalism to emerge in the Western Balkans. Instead, caught between legacies of imperial rule, and attempts to modernize and imitate European models, countries in the Balkans embraced an ethno-religous type of national identity.
Perspectives
We hope that this contribution will make students and readers more aware of long term processes that continue to influence the political and social processes in the Western Balkans. On the other hand, we would be pleased to bring to the attention of the broader audience the pecularities of the Balkans as a region.
Sokol Lleshi
University of New York at Tirana
Processes of nation-building are usually a historical consequence of social and political modernization. The Western Balkans, being at the semi-periphery of Europe, have had an ambiguous experience with modernization, trying on the one hand, to emulate the European civilization’s model of social and political transformation, and on the other hand, being torn by ethno-nationalist sentiments and movements. Contrary to the transformation of the initial ethno-nationalist mobilizations into cohesive imagined communities of citizens seceding from Empires, which have dominated for centuries the region of Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans region has had a recurring pattern of ethno-religious nationalist mobilization and ideology long after the formation of the Balkan nation-states in the nineteenth century. This chapter provides an overview of the debate in the literature regarding the sources of ethno-religious nationalism in the Western Balkans arguing in favor of structural and institutional explanations.
Ilir Kalemaj
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chapter 6: Sources and Continuities of Ethno-religious Nationalism in the Western Balkans, January 2020, Nomos Verlag,
DOI: 10.5771/9783748921516-151.
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