Diana Mishkova

Bio: Diana Mishkova is an academic researcher from Sofia University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Nationalism. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 18 publications receiving 79 citations.

Symbolic Geographies and Visions of Identity A Balkan Perspective

Abstract: 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.

Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making

Abstract: In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.

We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe

Abstract: Introduction Part I. Ethnos and Citizens: Versions of Cultural-Political Construction of Identity 1.1 Reconciliation of the Spirits and Fusion of the Interests: A"OttomanismA" as an Identity Politics 1.2 The People Incorporated: Constructions of the Nation in Transylvanian Romanian Liberalism, 1838-1848 1.3 A"We, the MacedoniansA": The Paths of Macedonian Supra-Nationalism (1878-1912) 1.4 History and Character: Visions of National Peculiarity in the Romanian Political Discourse of the Nineteenth-Century Part II. Nationalization of Sciences and the Definitions of the Folk 2.1 Barbarians, Civilized People and Bulgarians: Definition of Identity in Textbooks and the Press (1830-1878) 2.2 Narrating 'the People' and 'Disciplining' the Folk: the Constitution of the Hungarian Ethnographic Discipline and the Touristic Movements (1870-1900) 2.3 Who are the Bulgarians? A"Race,A" Science and Politics in Fin-de-Siecle Bulgaria 2.4 Imagining of National Spaces in Interwar Romania. The Emergence of Geopolitics Part III. The Canon-Builders 3.1 Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj and the Serbian Identity between Poetry and History 3.2 A"OttomanA" or A"WesternA": Two Version of Albanianness at the Turn of the 19th Century 3.3 A Contested Nation-Builder: Semseddin Sami FrashA"ri (1850-1904) and the Construction of Albanian and Turkish Nations

What is in Balkan History? Spaces and Scales in the Tradition of Southeast-European Studies

Abstract: This article takes a distance from the debate about 'symbolic geographies' and structural definitions of historical spaces as well as from surveying discrete disciplinary traditions or political agendas of regionalist scholarship in and on Southeastern Europe Its purpose instead has been two-fold On the one hand, to bring to light a preexistent but largely suppressed and un-reflected tradition of regionalist scholarship with the hope that this could help us fine tune the way we conceptualize, contemplate and evaluate regionalism as politics and transnationalism as a scholarly project In epistemological terms, on the other hand, it proposes a theoretical perspective to regionalist scholarship involving rigorous engagement with the scales of observation, and scale shifts, in the interpretation of history The hypothesis the article seeks to test maintains that the national and the (meso)regional perspectives to history chart differentiated 'spaces of experience' — ie the same occurrences are reported and judged in a different manner on the different scales — by way of displacing the valency of past processes, events, actors, and institutions and creating divergent temporalities — different national and regional historical times Different objects (ie spaces) of enquiry are therefore coextensive with different temporal layers, each of which demands a different methodological approach Drawing on texts of regional scholars, in which the historical reality of the Balkans/Southeastern Europe is articulated explicitly or implicitly, the article discusses also the relationship between different spaces and scales at the backdrop of the Braudelian and the microhistorical perspectives

Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany.

Abstract: Preface Introduction: Traditions of Nationhood in France and Germany I. The Institution of Citizenship 1. Citizenship as Social Closure 2. The French Revolution and the Invention of National Citizenship 3. State, State-System, and Citizenship in Germany II. Defining The Citizenry: The Bounds of Belonging 4. Citizenship and Naturalization in France and Germany 5. Migrants into Citizens: The Crystallization of Jus Soli in Late-Nineteenth-Century France 6. The Citizenry as Community of Descent: The Nationalization of Citizenship in Wilhelmine Germany 7. \"Etre Francais, Cela se Merite\": Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in France in the 1980s 8. Continuities in the German Politics of Citizenship Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Imagining the Balkans: Послепис

Abstract: Starting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continuing up to the present, Imagining the Balkans covers the Balkan's most formative years. From the down fall of the Ottoman Empire, through the turbulent nationalist years of the nineteenth century, up to World War I, the idea of the Balkans was fiercely, often violently, contested. In the wake of WWI, the beginnings of a tradition, largely enforced by academics, emerged stigmatizing the Balkans. Since then, the region has suffered from the neglect, abuse, and scant regard of both western Europe and the world. The result has been in many direct ways to compound the Balkan's poverty, internal violence, and lack of national self-image. A startling history of ideas, Imagining the Balkans provides a much needed exploration into a region too long neglected.

Governing Maritime Space: The South China Sea as a Mediterranean Cultural Area 1

Abstract: Whereas many institutions are in place to govern urban and rural land, maritime areas are less well covered. This situation of a “governance void” has led to uncertainty and conflicts. Thus the South China Sea has become a contested maritime space. In this paper the cultural theory of Oswald Spengler will be applied to stress the importance of conceptions of space as a basis for maritime governance. By comparing it to other maritime spaces, like the Baltic and the Mediterranean Sea, lessons will be drawn from the “longue duree” of history, as analysed by French historian Fernand Braudel. Embedded in this larger theoretical framework special attention will be placed on the Malay and Javanese Nusantara conception of maritime space and its implication for governing the South China Sea.

Can economic crises constitute collective identity crises? : the case of Greek European identity during the Greek debt/Eurozone crisis

Abstract: This thesis consists of a socio-psychological study of Greek European identity within the context of the Greek debt/Eurozone crisis. Drawing insights from Social Representations Theory (SRT) and Social Identity Theory (SIT), it approaches the question of identity in a dual manner, as are presentation and a psychological experience. The motivation of the research is enacted through the questioning of whether economic crises can provoke crises of collective identities. Its contribution is both theoretical and empirical. The thesis argues that although the term ‘identity crisis’ is a frequently used one, especially in conditions of post-modernity, an analytical elucidation of the varied destabilising dynamics behind potential ‘identity crises’ is unclear within existing literature. Furthermore, it is postulated that as useful and enlightening a social psychological approach may be for the study of identities, and although SIT’s focus on identity threats as destabilising for group self-esteem can help us understand identity dynamics, the discipline still lacks a more systematic analytical framework of identity destabilisations. The thesis develops an elaborate typology and conceptualisation of identity destabilisations and operationalises it for the study of Greek European identity through a triangulated single case study research design, combining a variety of data sources, such as historiographical data, media texts, expert and elite interviews, and interviews with non-expert citizens. The typology includes the destabilisations of identity conflict,identity devaluation, identity overvaluation and identity deficit. The results of the study indicate that the public discourse of the debt/Eurozone crisis has been abundant in representations of all such identity destabilisations. The interviews with Greek experts and elites, called in this study ‘ideational leaders’, and with non-expert citizens, designate that the most prevalent forms of identity destabilisation, both at the level of representation and of psychological experience in Greek society are those of identity conflict and identity devaluation. The results show a distinct public preoccupation with ideas, such as national self-reflection and collective responsibility. The representations made by expert and non-expert citizens approximate each other quite closely, while comparisons across the data sources and across time bring to the fore continuities of narratives and identity representations, which are explained within SRT’s assumption of anchoring as a return to previously established knowledge for the comprehension of new phenomena, as well as within the constraints faced by discursive actors in their attempts to construct new realities. It is concluded that a new narrative is necessitated for Greek European identity.

The economic growth of Central and Eastern Europe in comparative perspective, 1870–1989

Abstract: Recurring changes in the institutional and ideological structures of Central and Eastern Europe have made it difficult to quantify and interpret its long-term economic development. This article provides the foundations for a unified picture of economic growth in the region since 1870. We construct a consistent time series of GDP per capita for the present day states of Central and Eastern Europe over the period 1870–1989, and then draw on the literature of the ‘new’ growth theory in economics to assess their long-term economic performance in the wider European setting.