Topics in the Modern History of the Balkans
Level:
Doctoral CEU credits:
2 ECTS credits:
4 Academic year:
2009/2010 Academic year:
2010/2011 Academic year:
2011/2012 Semester:
Winter Start and end dates:
9 Jan 2012 - 30 Mar 2012 Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]:
Department of History Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area:
Social and Political History in a Comparative Perspective CEU Instructor(s):
Roumen Dontchev Daskalov Additional information:
GOALS:
• To familiarize the graduates with the specifics and the complexity of the modern Balkans
• To help them transcend national biases and become aware of broader multi-ethnic and multi-cultural contexts and the diversity of life-styles
• To help them place the region within a larger European and global perspective
• To foster critical and self-reflexive thinking Learning Outcomes:
• Graduates are able to reason analytically and form an argued judgment in complex situations
• They are able to communicate clearly (and use appropriate media) and to lead group discussions
• They learn to appreciate diversity, multicultural contexts and ethical values
• Graduates are able to design and conduct their own research
• They are able to write up high quality and innovative academic pieces that qualify for publication in peer-reviewed journals
• They have mastered a number of approaches not only in history, but also from other disciplines, especially sociology and cultural anthropology
• They are able to learn independently and to work on their further professional development
• They can analyze contemporary social problems by using a historical and theoretical perspective
• They develop skills and competences to make them employable in scholarly positions in the region and outside; they are able to work in an international and multicultural world Assessment :
1. Attendance and active involvement in class discussions are expected from all participants in the course. This presupposes the reading of the required readings. Please, note that though any participation in discussions is welcome, only meaningful contributions have a positive value in the assessment. In case someone is not able to attend the weekly Seminar for some good reasons, please, inform me in advance via E-mail.
2. The grading at the end of the course will be formed on the basis of three elements: contribution to class discussions (20%), an oral presentation (30%), the term paper (50%).
3. Everyone is expected to make an oral presentation - some 20-30 minutes - once during the course. The presentation should be related to one of the themes that make up the contents of the syllabus. The topic should be agreed with me in advance. It is advisable (though not obligatory) for those presenting to supply handouts (1-2 pages) with the basic points in order to facilitate comprehension and subsequent discussions.
4. The final (term) paper should be 15-20 pp. long. It should be relevant to one or more of the themes covered in the syllabus. The topic and main ideas should be consulted with me in advance. Papers outside the scope of the syllabus (with no bearing to it) and such that have been written for another purpose are not acceptable. The paper should follow the basic rules and conventions of a scholarly text, such as having a clearly defined problem (where possible - a "hypothesis"), consistent formulation of the basic ideas, internal articulation of the text to facilitate reading and comprehension, correct citation of sources (and enough authoritative sources), etc. It should be written in good English.
Full description:
The course deals with some of the most topical issues of the modern history of the Balkans. We start by discussing cultural legacies and Western influences in the region. Nation and state building are part of the story and of national grand narratives to be approached critically. There come the hard problems of modernization and underdevelopment typical of peasant societies. We will consider modern citizenship and “civil society”, but also the exclusion from participation (and reactions) of women and minorities. Then we proceed to political ideologies and regimes: agrarianism and right-wing ideologies, authoritarian regimes, and, in this connection - state intervention and etatism, the beginnings of a “Sozialstaat”. Totatlitarian communist regimes will be accorded attention with regard to selected issues. The discursive approach is represented by symbolic geographies and “theories” of the native. In the same vein we will deal with Western images of the Balkan "Other" and reactions to the stigma. Throughout the course SEE states and societies will be compared and contrasts and similarities will be established. The suggested readings reflect this comparative approach by providing representative case studies for comparative purposes. Please, note that the contents may be partly modified in accordance with the particular interests of the students.
COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS
ONE. Cultural legacies and Western influences. Early "Europeanization" ("Westernization"): fashion, implements and life-styles. The "demonstration effect".
Stavrianos, Leften. The Influence of the West on the Balkans. In: Charles and Barbara Jelavich (eds.) The Balkans in Transition. Hemden, Conn. 1974, 184-226. [
pdf]
Chirot, Daniel. Social Change in a Peripheral Society. The Creation of a Balkan Colony. New York, San Francisco, London 1976, 159-164. [pdf]
Stavrianos, Leften. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958, 1-32, 81-95, 414-419. [pdf] [pdf]
Wolff, Robert. The Balkans in Our Times. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass. 1974, 10-24, 50-69. [pdf]
Janos, Andrew. The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary 1825-1945. Princeton, New Jersey 1982, 313-316. [ pdf]
additional:
Stoianovich, Traian. The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant. - Journal of Economic History, 20 (1960) 2, 234-313 (reprinted in: Traian Stoianovich. Between East and West. The Balkan and Mediterranean Worlds. Vol. 2 (Economies and Societies). New York: New Rochelle, 1992, 1-77.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans. Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983, 39-168.
TWO. Building the nation.
Populations into nations: processes of national formation before liberation. Nation building under the auspices of the nation state: the role of education, military conscription, media and communications, etc.
Clarke, James. Education and National Consciousness in the Balkans. In: Clarke. James, The Pen and the Sword. Studies in Bulgarian History. (ed. Dennis Hupchik) East European Monographs, Boulder, 1988, 24-57. [pdf]
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans. Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983, the relevant pages. [pdf]
Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. London: Chatto & Windus, 1977, 485-496. [pdf]
THREE. Building the state. Adoption of Western-type institutions: representative democracy, central and local government, armies, formal law, etc. Problems of adaptation.
Crampton, Richard. Bulgaria, 1878-1918. A History. New York. Columbia University Press, 1983 (East European Monographs, Boulder), 325-328. [pdf]
Roberts, Henry. Rumania. Political Problems of an Agrarian State. New Haven, London 1951, 108-116. [pdf]
Seton-Watson, Hugh. Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945, 138-145. [pdf]
Janos, Andrew. The Politics of Backwardness in Continental Europe. - World Politics. 41: 3 (1989), 337-347. [pdf]
FOUR. Peasants and the rural economy. Familism as a way of life. The role of custom. Traditional mentalities. The rural - urban cleavage.
Tomasevich, Joso, Peasants, Politics and Economic Change in Yugoslavia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1955, 570-600. [pdf]
Sanders, Irving. A Balkan village. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1949, 144-160. [pdf]
Trouton, Ruth. Peasant Renaissance in Yugoslavia, 1900-1950. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1952, 68-82.
Chayanov, A. The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, Illinois, 1966, 1-13. [pdf]
FIVE. Modernization in South-east Europe. The outstanding and ambiguous role of the state. Policies of industrialization. Advance in education and in healthcare. Other agents of change. Difficulties and impasses of modernization.
Spulber, Nicolas. The Role of the State in Economic Growth in Eastern Europe since 1860. - In: Hugh Aitken (ed.) The State and Economic Growth. New York 1959, 255-277. [pdf]
Stavrianos, Leften. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958, 419-424, 593-608. [pdf]
Sanders, Irving. A Balkan village. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1949, 161-178, 183-195. [pdf]
Crampton, Richard. Modernization: Conscious, Unconscious and Irrational. - In: Ronald Schönfeld (ed.) Industrialisierung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa. München: Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, 125-134. [pdf]
Optional:
Daskalov, Roumen. Development in the Balkan Periphery prior to World War Second: Some Reflections. - Südost-Forschungen, München, 1998.
Warriner, Doreen. Economics of Peasant Farming. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1939, 140-168.
Warriner, Doreen. General Introduction: Contrasts and Comparisons. - In: Doreen Warriner (ed.) Contrasts in Emerging Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965, 1-25.
Janos, Andrew. The Politics of Backwardness in Continental Europe. - World Politics. 41: 3 (1989), 337-347.
Seton-Watson, Hugh. Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945, 97-99, 105-110.
SIX. Citizenship. Constitutions and realities. Beginnings of a civil society. Women. Minorities.
Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew. Ethnic Cleansing. New York& St. Martin’s Press, 1996, 215-226.[pdf]
Seton-Watson, Hugh. Minorities and mixed populations, Eastern Europe between the wars 1918-1941, Chapter 7, 268-319. [pdf]
Optional:
Burgess, Adam. National Minority Rights and the “Civilising” of Eastern Europe. – Contention, (5), Winter 1996), N. 2.
Pearson, Raymond. National Minorities in Eastern Europe 1848-1945. The Macmillan Press, 1983.
SEVEN. Ideologies, movements, regimes (I): agrarianism and the peasantist movements ("green revolution").
Mitrany, David. Marx against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1951, 118-137. [pdf]
Stavrianos, Leften. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958, 608-615. [pdf]
Bell, John, Peasants in Power. Alexander Stamboliiski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, 1899-1923. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977, 59-73. [pdf]
EIGHT. Ideologies, movements, regimes (II): Right-wing and fascist ideas and movements. The authoritarian regimes between the wars.
Sugar, Peter. Conclusion. - In: Peter Sugar (ed.) Native Fascism in the Successor States 1918-1945. Santa Barbara, California, 1971, 147-156.[pdf]
Hitchins, Keith. Rumania, 1866-1947. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, 319-334.
Seton-Watson, Hugh. Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945, 256-267.
Janos, Andrew. The One-Party State and Social Mobilization: East Europe between the Wars. In: Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore (eds.) Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society. New York, London 1970, 204-235. [pdf]
Weber, Eugen Varieties of Fascism [pdf]
NINE. State intervention and etatism. The beginnings of “Sozialstaat” (labor laws, insurances, etc.). Eugenic ideas and laws.
Literature to be added.
TEN. Symbolic geographies. The affirmation of "the native" (pagan, orthodox, peasant, etc.). Theories of origins and racial "theories".
Hitchins, Keith. Rumania 1866-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 298-318. [pdf]
Antohi, Sorin. Romania and the Balkans. From Geocultural Bovarism to Etnic Onthology. – Tr@nsit online.
Stoianovich, Traian. The Pattern of Serbian Intellectual Evolution. - Comparative Studies in Society and History. 1 (1958/9), 257-272. [pdf]
Daskalov, Roumen. Ideas about, and Reactions to Modernization in the Balkans. - East European Quarterly, 31: 2 (1997), 161-171. [pdf]
Winternitz, Judith. The "Turanian" Hypothesis and Magyar Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century. - In: Sussez, Roland and J. Eade (eds.) Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1983, 143-155s. [pdf]
Optional::
Pinto, Vivian. The Civic and Aestetic Ideal of Bulgarian Narodnik Writers. - Slavonic and East European Review, XXXII, N 79, June, 1954, 344-366.
Hitchins, Keith. Gindirea: Nationalism in a Spiritual Guise. - In: Kenneth Jowitt (ed.) Social Change in Romania 1860-1940. Berkeley: University of California, 1978, 140-173.
Milojkovic-Djuric, Jelena. Panslavism and National Identity in Russia and in the Balkans 1830-1880: Images of the Self and Others. New York: Columbia University Press (East European Monographs, Boulder), 1994, 54-75.
ELEVEN. Communism and after. “Popular democracies” and Sovietization (Stalinism). The Yugoslav “diversion”. Rumanian “exceptionalism”. Evolution after Stalinism. Dissident critics of the system. The fall of communism and the “transition”.
Stokes, Gale. The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 1993. [pdf]
Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. [pdf]
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison.
Havel, Haclav. The Power of the Powerless. [pdf]
TWELVE. "Balkanizing" the Balkans: a postcolonial perspective. The Balkan "Other" under the Western gaze. Balkan "master themes" and key metaphors. Reactions to the stigma.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. London and Henley: Harmondsworth, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, 19-28. [pdf]
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans, 1-50. [pdf]
Bakic-Hayden, Milica. Nestling Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review, 54 (1995).
LIST OF LITERATURE
Antohi, Sorin. Romania and the Balkans. From Geocultural Bovarism to Etnic Onthology. – Tr@nsit online.
Bakic-Hayden, Milica. Nestling Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia. Slavic Review, 54 (1995).
Bell, John, Peasants in Power. Alexander Stamboliiski and the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, 1899-1923. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977, 59-73.
Bell-Fialkoff, Andrew. Ethnic Cleansing. New York& St. Martin’s Press, 1996, 215-226.
Black, Cyril. The Dynamics of Modernization. A Study in Comparative History. New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1966, 5-34.
Bendix, Reinhard. Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered. In: Comparative Studies in Society and History, 9: 3 (1967), 318-344.
Burgess, Adam. National Minority Rights and the “Civilising” of Eastern Europe. – Contention, (5), Winter 1996), N. 2.
Chayanov, A. The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, Illinois, 1966, 1-13.
Crampton, Richard. Modernization: Conscious, Unconscious and Irrational. - In: Ronald Schoenfeld (ed.) Industrialisierung und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Suedosteuropa. Muenchen: Suedosteuropa-Gesellschaft, 125-134.
Crampton, Richard. Bulgaria, 1878-1918. A History. New York. Columbia University Press, 1983 (East European Monographs, Boulder), 325-328.
Clarke, James. Education and National Consciousness in the Balkans. In: Clarke. James, The Pen and the Sword. Studies in Bulgarian History. (ed. Dennis Hupchik) East European Monographs, Boulder, 1988, 24-57.
Chirot, Daniel. Social Change in a Peripheral Society. The Creation of a Balkan Colony. New York, San Francisco, London 1976, 159-164.
Daskalov, Roumen. Ideas about, and Reactions to Modernization in the Balkans. - East European Quarterly, 31: 2 (1997), 161-171.
Harrison, David. The Sociology of Modernization and Development. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988, 29-32, 57-61, 97-99, 175-183.
Hirshman, Albert. Obstacles to Development: A Classification and a Quasi-Vanishing Act. - Hirschman, Albert, A Bias for Hope. Essays on Development in Latin America. New Haven, London 1971, 312-327.
Hitchins, Keith. Rumania 1866-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 298-318.
Janos, Andrew. The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary 1825-1945. Princeton, New Jersey 1982, 313-316, 337-347.
Lerner, Daniel. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: The Free Press,1958, 47-54.
Mitrany, David. Marx against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1951, 118-137.
Paine, Stanley, Fascism. Comparison and Definition, The University of Wisconsin Press, 110-121.
Pearson, Raymond. National Minorities in Eastern Europe 1848-1945. The Macmillan Press, 1983.
Ritter, Harry. Dictionary of Concepts in History. New York - Westport - London: The Greenwood Press, 1986, 273-277.
Roberts, Henry. Rumania. Political Problems of an Agrarian State. New Haven, London 1951, 108-116.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. London and Henley: Harmondsworth, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, 19-28.
Sanders, Irving. A Balkan village. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1949, 144-160, 161-178, 183-195.
Senghaas, Dieter. The European Experience. A Historical Critique of Development Theory. Leamington Spa/Dover, New Hampshire: Berg Publishers, 1985, 13-37, 46-53, 63-65.
Seton-Watson, Hugh. Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945, 138-145, 97-99, 105-110.
Spulber, Nicolas. The Role of the State in Economic Growth in Eastern Europe since 1860. - In: Hugh Aitken (ed.) The State and Economic Growth. New York 1959, 255-277.
Stavrianos, Leften. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958, 1-32, 81-95, 184-226, 419-424, 593-608, 608-615.
Stoianovich, Traian. The Pattern of Serbian Intellectual Evolution. - Comparative Studies in Society and History. 1 (1958/9), 257-272.
Tomasevich, Joso, Peasants, Politics and Economic Change in Yugoslavia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1955, 570-600.
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 161-183.
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 7-20, 184-189.
Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. London: Chatto & Windus, 1977, 485-496.
Winternitz, Judith. The "Turanian" Hypothesis and Magyar Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century. - In: Sussez, Roland and J. Eade (eds.) Culture and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1983, 143-155.
P.S. Some more literature will be added in during the course.