Disciplinary Boundaries in Question: Balkan Studies in a Globalizing World

Abstract

The disciplinary boundaries between Balkan Studies and Near East and/or Middle East Studies 1 were basically drawn in the course of the 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th century within a certain political framework and as results of European political interests. Arabic and Islamic Studies were considered as the study of the culturally and religiously other. Balkan Studies in this period of time were conceived as “the orient within” 2 . The dissolution of the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires by the end of World War I changed the political landscape. Near East Studies received the flavour of British and French Colonial Studies, whereas the German Reich was interested to explore the designated food deliverer, the Balkans, within its concept of Grosraumpolitik. After 1945 the situation again changed for