Abstract
Leading up to and following the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in 1991, leaders of national independence movements rallied around the aim of “returning to Europe.” Construing nation-state identities as European was a means by which national elites sought to gain international support for national independence movements with the dissolution of SFRY, and to differentiate their respective national identities from the Yugoslav (or “Balkan”) sphere, to which they claimed they were artificially tied for the past several decades. Europe was thus simultaneously an important element of internal national self-understanding, and something external to the nation, an identity to be achieved. As Susan Gal (1991, 442) points out, the rhetorical slogan “return to Europe” suggests such a duality, for one must return to a place where it currently does not belong.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bakić-Hayden, Milicia. 1995. Nesting orientalisms: The case of former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review 54:917–31.
Buden, Boris. 2000. Europe is a whore. In Media and war, ed. Nena Skopljanac Brunner, 23–45. Zagreb: Center for Transition and Civil Society Research.
Cohen, Leonard. 1993. The disintegration of Yugoslavia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Delanty, Gerard. 2003. Conceptions of Europe: A review of recent trends. European Journal of Social Theory 6:471–88.
Gal, Susan. 1991. Bartók’s funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian political rhetoric. American Ethnologist 81:440–58.
Hammond, Andrew. 2004. The uses of Balkanism: Representation and power in British travel writing, 1850–1914. Slavonic and East European Review 82:601–24.
Hansen, Lene. 1996. Slovenian identity: State-building on the Balkan border. Alternatives 21:473–97.
Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The west unique, not universal. Foreign Affairs 75:28–46.
Jaklič, Andreja, and Marjan Svetličič. 2003. Enhanced transition through outward internationalization: Outward foreign direct investment by Slovenian firms. London: Ashgate.
Jalušić, Vlasta. 1994. Troubles with democracy: Women and Slovene independence. In Independent Slovenia: Origins, movements, prospects, ed. Jill Benderley and Evan Kraft, 135–58. New York: St. Martin’s.
Kneśević, Duđa. 1998. The enemy side of national ideologies: Croatia at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. Budapest: Central European University History Department Working Paper Series.
Kuzmanić, Tonci. 1995. New social movements and a new state. War Report 30:36–38.
Lindstrom, Nicole. 2003. Between Europe and the Balkans: Mapping Slovenia and Croatia’s “return to Europe” in the 1990s. Dialectical Anthropology 27:313–29.
Lindstrom, Nicole, and Maple Razsa. 1998. Desnicu mije ili prepravijanje svetskog poretka. [The right hand washes the other: Huntington, Tuđman, and the new eorld order.] Arkzin 4:40–43.
Maštnak, Tomas. 1994. From social movements to national sovereignty. In Independent Slovenia: Origins, movements, prospects, ed. Jill Benderley and Evan Kraft, 93–112. New York: St. Martin’s.
Patterson, Patrick. 2003. On the edge of reason: The boundaries of Balkanism in Slovenian, Austrian, and Italian discourse. Slavic Review 62:110–41.
Razsa, Maple, and Nicole Lindstrom. 2004. Balkan is beautiful: Balkanism in the political discourse of Tutman’s Croatia. East European Politics and Societies 18:628–50.
Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. 1997. Zašto i otkad se grozimo balkana? [Why, and since when, are we so afraid of the Balkans?] Erasmus 23:20–30.
Rizman, Rudolf. 1995. Slovenia. In Political and economic transformation in east central Europe, ed. Peter Havlik, Hanspeter Neuhold, and Arnold Suppan, 57–68. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Roe, Paul. 2004. Which security dilemma? Mitigating ethnic conflict: The case of Croatia. Security Studies 13: 280–313.
Rupel, Dmitri. 2001. Ten Years of Slovenia’s Foreign Policy, 1991–2001. Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.mzz.gov.si/index.php?id=47&L=2 (August 27, 2007).
Slovenian Office of the President. 2001. Valuable testimonies for present and future studies of the process of Slovenia’s gaining of independence http://www2.gov.si/up-rs/uprs_ang.nsf (June 25, 2006).
Stubbs, Paul. 1996. Nationalisms, globalization and civil society in Croatia and Slovenia. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 19:1–26.
Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woodward, Susan. 1993. Balkan Tragedy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2008 Noel Parker, ed.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lindstrom, N. (2008). Boundary-making in Europe’s Southeastern Margin: Balkan/Europe Discourse in Croatia and Slovenia. In: Parker, N. (eds) The Geopolitics of Europe’s Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610323_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610323_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53901-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-61032-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)