This title was first published in 2001. In seeking to better understand post-communist identity change, this book presents an analysis based on the study of everyday life in two villages in northern Albania. The author describes the villages from the perspective of community, economic activity and relations with the state. The book applies theories relating identity and civil society to the social, economic and political realities associated with post-communist transformation. By describing village life in northern Albania at the close of the 20th century, it aims to complement the anthropoligical work undertaken by Edith Durham in the early 1900s and by Margaret Hasluck in the 1930s.

Bogen er opdelt i en række artikler og essays med følgende overskrifter: Islam, Ethnicity and State in the Contemporary Balkans. Strategies for Sustaining a Vulnerable Identity: the Case of the Bulgarian Pomaks. From Religious Identity to Ethnic Mobilisation: the Turks of Bulgaria before, under and since Communism. Changing Notions of National Identity among Muslims in Thrace and Macedonia: Turks, Pomaks and Roma. The Muslim Population in FYROM (Macedonia): Public Perceptions. Islam, State and Society in Post-Communist Albania. The Kosovo Albanians: Ethnic Confrontation with the Slav State. The Sandzak: A Perspective of Serb-Muslim Relations. Turkey as Kin-state: Turkish Foreign Policy towards Turkish and Muslim Communities in the Balkans. Sustaining Turkish-Islamic Loyalities: the Diyanet in Western Europe. After Dayton

The history of the Balkans has been a distillation of the great and terrible themes of 20th century history-the rise of nationalism, communism, fascism, genocide, identity and war. Written by one of the leading historians of the region, this is a new interpretation of that history, focusing on the uses and legacies of nationalism in the Balkan region. In particular, Professor Veremis analyses the influence of the West-from the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise and collapse of Yugoslavia. Throughout the state-building process of Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria and later, Albania, the West provided legal, administrative and political prototypes to areas bedevilled by competing irredentist claims. At a time when Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria and Croatia have become full members of the EU, yet some orphans of the Communist past are facing domestic difficulties, A Modern History of the Balkans seeks to provide an important historical context to the current problems of nationalism and identity in the Balkans.

Balkan Identities brings together historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars all working under the shared conviction that the only way to overcome history is to intimately understand it. The contributors of Balkan Identities focus on historical memory, collective national memory, and the political manipulation of national identities. They refine our understanding of memory and identity in general and explore and assess the significance of particular manifestations of Balkan national identities and national memories in the region. The essays in Balkan Identities grapple with three major problems: the construction of historical memory, sites of national memory, and the mobilization of national identities. While most essays focus on a single country (e.g. Croatia, Romania, Turkey, Cyprus, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia), they are in dialogue with each other and share an opposition to rigid isolationist identities. Illuminating and challenging, Balkan Identities demonstrates the ever-changing nature of a troubled and culturally vibrant region.

This book shifts analytical focus from macro-politicization and securitization of Islam to Muslims' choices, practices and public expressions of faith. An empirically rich analysis, the book provides rich cross-country evidence on the emergence of autonomous faith communities as well as the evolution of Islam in the broader European context.

While the Bosnian Muslims have for understandable reasons attracted a great deal of recent attention, other Muslim groups in the Balkans have escaped similar scrutiny. Bringing together leading specialists in the region to address this gap, this volume focuses on the question of Muslim identity in the contemporary Balkans. With the exception of the Bosnians, all of the Muslim communities of the former Yugoslavia are examined--the Sandzak, Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)--as well as those of Greece, Bulgaria, and Albania. Combining a multidisciplinary approach not often found in studies of the Balkans with an accessible and readable format, this volume offers a detailed look at the religious, ethnic, and national identities of the Balkan Muslims and their relationships with the states in which they live.

Balkan Legacies is a study of the aftermath of war and state socialism in the contemporary Balkans. The authors look at the inescapable inheritances of the recent past and those that the present has to deal with. The book’s key theme is the interaction, often subliminal, of the experiences of war and socialism in contemporary society in the region. Fifteen contributors approach this topic from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and through a variety of interpretive lenses, collectively drawing a composite picture of the most enduring legacies of conflict and ideological transition in the region, without neglecting national and local peculiarities. The guiding questions addressed are: what is the relationship between memories of war, dictatorship (communist or fascist), and present-day identity—especially from the perspective of peripheral and minority groups and individuals? How did these components interact with each other to produce the political and social culture of the Balkan Peninsula today? The answers show the ways in which the experiences of the latter part of the twentieth century have defined and shaped the region in the twenty-first century.

Traces in detail the most recent decade of Albania's existence.