Powder Keg Research Articles

Europeanization of the Balkans, or Balkanization of Europe?

Europeanization of the Balkans, or Balkanization of Europe? Vasko Naumovski (bio) The European Union enlargement process has been a substantial benefit for European citizens and has proved to be the most successful transition of the post-communist countries. Nevertheless, the Balkans region remains without a clear perspective for full integration into the EU, creating potential for further uncertainty and even conflict. In attempting to contain the "Powder Keg of Europe," greater attention needs to be paid to the ending of bilateral disputes and the enabling of selfsustainability in the region. This article analyzes the conflicting concepts of Europeanization and Balkanization, discussing the place of the Balkans in the European Union and internal challenges to the EU such as the rise of nationalism, security threats, the migrant crisis, the lack of consensus, and even fragmentation. Challenges faced by the EU today are different from those in the 1980s or 1990s, yet these past lessons should be taken into consideration while defining the future developments of the Union, including its final borders, decision-making reforms, and values shared by all of its current and potential members states. A History of Fragmentation The Balkans have a reputation for normalized conflict and bloodshed. History, religion, ethnicity, territory, and political ideology have served to provoke violence in what has seemed like a never-ending cycle. Overlapping foreign interests and intervention, as well as independence movements, have increased the explosive potential, earning the Balkans the nickname "Powder Keg of Europe." In the past, nearly all Balkan ethnic groups struggled to create their "great nation-states"—often at the expense of their neighbors. In the years before the First World War, ideas of "pan-Slavic" unity in the Balkans promoted by Imperial Russia, as well as attempts to expand the spheres of influence of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, created a volatile environment in which local events often led to major regional conflicts. The 20th-century fragmentation of the Balkan Peninsula began with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Subsequent divisions of its remaining territory took place during the Balkan Wars, the First and Second World Wars, and eventually culminated in the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The decline of the Ottoman Empire1 (mainly due to failed reform attempts, inefficient bureaucracy and repeated uprisings), the formation of national identities, and the rise of newly created nation-states significantly increased the potential for conflict in the Balkans at the end of the 19th century. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 by Russia and its increased pressure on the region were merely additions to the powder keg. Subsequently, these tensions were heightened by the outbreak of World [End Page 120] War I, as neither Balkan war seemed to satisfy the aspirations of the countries involved. After World War I, the creation of a unified South Slavic state—into what ultimately became Yugoslavia—seemed to have stabilized most of the region until the second half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the region's proximity to both the Eastern and Western military blocs during the Cold War, internal ethnic-based irredentism, a failing economy, and ideological diversity led to the most violent clashes in Europe after World War II. In particular, the breakup of Yugoslavia and its aftermath caused a number of conflicts across its territory: the 1991 conflict between the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) and Slovenian Defense Forces; the Croatian Serbs/YPA versus Croatia in 1991–95; the Bosnian Serbs/YPA against Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats in 1992–95; the Army of Yugoslavia versus the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998–99; the 1999 NATO campaign against the Army of Yugoslavia; the Army of Yugoslavia versus the Liberation Army of Preshevo, Medvedja, and Bujanovac in 1992–2001; and the Army of the Republic of Macedonia against the National Liberation Army in 2001. All of these developments gave rise to the term "Balkanization," which refers to ethnic conflict within multiethnic states, as well as, more specifically, the ethnic cleansing and civil war that often occur following the dis-integration of such states.2 Similarly, it has been described as the act of breaking up regions or groups into smaller, often hostile units.3 The...

“We Have the Trouble that Every Serb Wants to Be a Minister, and Every Minister — to Be a Prince”: Serbia at the Beginning of the 20th Century — the Choice of Path Between Vienna and Saint Petersburg

The article, on the example of the Serbian Principality, shows the features of modernization processes that took place on the Balkan Peninsula in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century. The example of the formation and development of the Serbian state coherently illustrates that the process of entry into modern European society depends not only on the rate of change in economics, politics, ways of life, culture, and so on, but on the balance between all of these. Also, of great importance is the government’s ability to make prompt changes to both domestic and foreign policy matters, since any discrepancy between interests of state and society can lead the country to a pre-reform state or to a deep crisis. The latter has become one of the most important prerequisites for turning the region into “Europe’s powder keg”.

Everywhere the Cold War

Everywhere the Cold War Jason Parker (bio) Odd Arne Westad. The Cold War: A World History. New York: Basic Books, 2017. 710 pp. Notes, index. $40.00. It has become increasingly common at conferences to hear scholars musing about the historiographical staying power of the Cold War. Although seemingly all-consuming and all-defining to the generations of historians whose careers unfolded within it, the four-decade conflict between superpowers has begun to recede into our intellectual horizons. Other contemporaneous currents—globalization, economic flux, religious fervor, nationalism, and nativism, to name a few—seem, with the benefit of hindsight, to hold greater significance than we previously appreciated, and greater longevity going forward. The Cold War's power to shape societal and world affairs thus can appear in retrospect quite overblown. The decades-long battle among scholars of U.S.-International history over the origins of the conflict is telling in this regard. Once well-known by those preparing for doctoral exams in U.S. history, the triumvirate of Orthodox/Revisionist/Post-Revisionist schools of thought is no longer standard fare. Revisionist avatar William Appleman Williams, for example, seems to have dropped off most reading lists. Yet perhaps the real surprise is that those schools lingered for as long as they did. This itself suggests the extent to which scholarly understanding of postwar history centered on an East-West Cold War. The nuclear threat, understandably, concentrated the collective mind. Non-East-West actors tended either not to appear or did so as mere victims of superpower malfeasance in their midst, as in Korea and Vietnam. The ideological clash itself was 1945–1989, or at most 1917–1991. What John Lewis Gaddis calls the "long peace" was in this view the central postwar story, obscuring all others when it was not commandeering them.1 Odd Arne Westad endorses an East-West centrality while slyly moving the literature beyond it. The Cold War: A World History takes a god's-eye view of time and space to affix the superpower conflict within a longer timeline and a worldwide frame. Westad positions it as unfolding "within the context of two processes of deep change in international politics: [the] emergence of new states [and] the emergence of the United States as the dominant global power" [End Page 645] (p. 7). The Cold War occupied the latter decades of a century-long interplay of reformist political ideologies, the Industrial Revolution, and the transition from the Columbian to the post-Columbian atlas. This reading elevates the Cold War above its role as primarily a struggle for mastery of Eurasia, or a nuclear standoff, or a spark for bloody violence far and wide. It was of course all of those, and other, things. But Westad ingeniously, artfully, and convincingly encourages us to place the conflict in a broader compass. In this he is continuing the contribution of his Bancroft-prizewinning The Global Cold War, which lifted the Cold War out of its European ground-zero and re-centered it in the global South. In this account, global-North military interventions helped to spark the rise of the "Third World" nations whose citizens saw them as a continuation of a half-millennium of "pan-European" expansion and dominance. Scholars continue to debate the relative role of military incursions in shaping North-South relations, as compared to those of a more economic, cultural, or political bent. But The Global Cold War was nonetheless vital in a wholly salutary development in the literature: recasting the conflict from East-West to North-South, from superpower-centric to multivalent. The Cold War thereby shifts from being the default framework for postwar international history to being one of several major phenomena within it. The present book argues for the Cold War's continued centrality, while obliging it to again share the stage. Among other implications, this underlines that the relevant actors were not solely American or Soviet (or Chinese) agents provocateurs sneaking around global-South powder kegs striking matches, conniving and cajoling among their gullible victims. The cast also very much included global-South players too. The "discovery" of their agency—"retiring the puppets," as Max Paul Friedman puts it—is central to revising...

Hybrid nature of extremism: Cohesive characteristics of ethno-nationalism and religious extremism as generators of Balkan insecurity

It will be no mistake to say that the region of the Balkans is the site with 'good soil' for conflicts. A significant number of scholars, who have analyzed the nature of conflicts in the Balkans, recognized the 1990s wars as religious conflicts. Others point out that the nature of these conflicts is based on ethnic and ethno-nationalist reasons. Taking into account the complex character of the 'Balkans powder keg', it could be said that both views are correct. But then again, each of these conflicts had (and has) certain differences that support the thesis by which this particularly sensitive issue must by analyzed with exclusive respect for the role of religion. Namely, the role of religion is prominent and significant in almost all Balkan conflicts inspired by ethno-nationalist ideas and passions. In this regard, the main objective of this paper is to emphasize the so called 'hybrid' character of the Balkans antagonisms and conflicts, which have extremist-religious and ethno-nationalist components at the same time.

Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 by Andrew E. Masich

Reviewed by: Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 by Andrew E. Masich Christopher Bean Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867. By Andrew E. Masich. ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Pp. 464. Illustrations, maps, glossary, appendix, notes, bibliography, index.) In Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, Andrew E. Masich examines the little-known borderlands aspect of the war. Masich highlights how pre-war ethnic tensions, combined with the war itself, "ignited a powder keg of civil wars" that were fought "concurrent with and connected to the American Civil War for survival and dominance" (4). The groups in conflict included white Unionists and Confederates; Indian peoples, including the Navajo, Yaquis, Quechan, Pueblo, Apache, and Papago; and Mexicans on both sides of the border. The setting of Masich's work is the southwestern border region between the United States and Mexico. He notes that many people, viewing the international border as irrelevant, passed freely back and forth between the two countries. Cultures, war, ideology, economics, and survival all influenced the actions of those in the borderlands. Union and Rebel forces, of course, were driven either to preserve the Union or defend and expand the Confederacy. Indians, seeing the opportunity the war brought, attempted to recapture agency lost. Raiding (which Masich skillfully differentiates from warfare) with impunity, they hoped to reverse the detrimental effects that white intrusion had on their sovereignty. Underlying the violence lay a "culturally rooted sense of martial manhood" (4). Simultaneous to the American Civil War the French, with Spanish and English assistance, intervened in Mexico in response to President Benito Juárez's moratorium on foreign debt payments and installed Habsburg Prince Maximilian of Austria as emperor. This cleaved Mexican society along socioeconomic lines, with conservative elites rallying to Maximilian against liberal opponents. This flouting of the Monroe Doctrine guaranteed the attention of the United States despite its concurrent civil war. While struggling to retain control of the Southwest against Confederates and Indians, Union officers repeatedly advised superiors to cooperate with anti-Maximilian Mexican officials in northern Mexico (particularly Sonora) against their common enemies. These entreaties even broached the possibility of a joint U.S.-Mexican operation against Maximilian, with [End Page 342] the United States dismissing pretenses and invading and occupying portions of Mexico. Masich concludes that the American Civil War "triggered cataclysmic" consequences (288): increased federal control of the borderlands, decreased Indian agency, and precipitation of the reservation system. It also exacerbated societal tensions in Mexico that ultimately ignited the Mexican Revolution. Masich superbly details Indian and Anglo warfare, equipment, tactics, and strategy. Especially enlightening is the author's dissection of how Indians and Anglos approached nature and survival in the desert. Although Indian tactics and adaptability proved superior, according to Masich, Anglo firepower and ferocity negated any indigenous advantages. The author also compares indigenous raiding and warfare, differentiating Apache and Navajo practices in particular. His conclusions are based heavily upon evidence from an often neglected source, the Indian Depredation Claims files. Well-researched and written, this book is not without room for criticism. Indians are not portrayed in much depth outside of a military context. Others will want more of the Mexican perspective, which often disappears. The discussions of both slavery and debt peonage in the borderlands could use more detail. And finally, historians will be surprised to discover that Chief Justice John Marshall, not Roger B. Taney, ruled that "the Negro had no rights that white men were bound to respect" (275). These quibbles, nonetheless, hardly detract from an otherwise enlightening and highly recommended read. Christopher Bean East Central University Copyright © 2017 The Texas State Historical Association

Opioid Epidemic Extends to Post-Surgical Patients

Opioid Epidemic Extends to Post-Surgical Patients

Culture Clash

Culture Clash Jacob Singer (bio) Heritage of Smoke Josip Novakovich Dzanc Books www.dzancbooks.org/our-books/heritage-of-smoke-by-josip-novakovich 240Pages; Print, $16.95 How much control do we actually have over our lives? This question binds Josip Novakovich’s latest collection of short stories Heritage of Smoke. Novakovich exerted his free will by leaving Yugoslavia to immigrate to the United States to study, write, and teach. In 2009, he moved to Canada to take a teaching position. While Novakovich has exerted control over his life, he is sensitive to those with less agency. They are the subject of this collection. Each story reveals the shallowness of safety and order in life, hinting at the turbulence swirling below the surface—be it social anarchy, mental derangement, or pure chance. Like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), many of the characters easily lose their self-control to participate in something uncivilized. These stories dramatize the relationship between individuals and their cultural contexts—primarily focusing on individuals from the Yugosphere. Here groups can be broken along many lines. There are Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians; Christians and Muslims; alcoholics and non-alcoholics. These are but a few of the identities that shape the characters, some who stay in the region once known as Yugoslavia; others who leave for a new life and adopt a new identity. In “Crossbar” the narrator loses himself while watching a semifinal UEFA Cup football match in Zagreb. He states, “Ordinarily I was a civilized architect, with a taste for macchiato and single malts. At the beginning of the match, I was still a civilized human, but now, by the end, I had taken off my shirt and was hollering for blood.” Later a crowd, including the narrator, jumps the fence, enters the pitch, and attacks the players and officials. The story continues to take twists and turns for the worse. But this is one example of how Novakovich dramatizes the fragility of civilization—that we are all a few pints away from barbarism. Civilization supposedly keeps humans from annihilating themselves. Law and justice keep men from attaining vengeance. The story ends with a sober narrator rediscovering his moral compass. Click for larger view View full resolution The story “Dutch Treat” opens in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a flower seller named Esad recognizing Martin, who doesn’t recall the salesman. As a member of the Dutch unit in the United Nations, Martin served in Srebrenica when the Serbian military searched for Muslim terrorists. While the Dutch drank and played cards, the Serbians massacred thousands. Eventually news got out and Holland withdrew their forces in shame, and Martin quit to study theology. Decades later, thousands of miles away Esad spots Martin as a recognizable face from his time in Srebrenica. After the initial interaction, Martin returns to the train station to strike up a conversation with Esad. This inciting incident pushes the two together to examine how civilization can trap someone in the brutality of war. The fall of Yugoslavia, which was always a powder keg of nationalism waiting to explode, points to another example of the fragility of statehood. The story continues with Martin offering Esad compensation for his suffering, but this act, done with the best intention, breaks the law. During the interrogation, Martin realizes how his one act indirectly ripples through the world. It points to an interconnectedness that exists unseen. In this instance, the best of intentions can have the worst consequences. The story ends with civilization using its tools to collect enough happenstances to argue for intention: “‘It’s too much of a coincidence for us to let it go unquestioned—way too many ‘coincidences.’” Here civilization, with its access to surveillance technology, works without morality; Martin directly experiences the corruption of civilization, echoing his experience while working in a corrupted division of the UN. Many of these stories shake the reader’s sense of faith in institutions and systems. “Be Patient” applies this to the world of medicine. The story opens in Daruvar, Croatia, where Nenad takes his daughter to receive an immunization for the measles. During the walk home they pass a dog that Nenad...

Powder keg divisions in the critical state regime: transition from continuous to explosive percolation

The underlying microstructure and dynamics of a dense granular material as it evolves towards the “critical state”, a limit state in which the system deforms with an essentially constant volume and stress ratio, remains widely debated in the micromechanics of granular media community. Strain localization, a common mechanism in the large strain regime, further complicates the characterization of this limit state. Here we revisit the evolution to this limit state within the framework of modern percolation theory. Attention is paid to motion transfer: in this context, percolation translates to the emergence of a large-scale connectivity in graphs that embody information on individual grain displacements. We construct each graph G(r) by connecting nodes, representing the grains, within a distance r in the displacement-state-space. As r increases, we observe a percolation transition on G(r) . The size of the jump discontinuity increases in the lead up to failure, indicating that the nature of percolation transition changes from continuous to explosive. We attribute this to the emergence of collective motion, which manifests in increasingly isolated communities in G(r) . At the limit state, where the jump discontinuity is highest and invariant across the different unjamming cycles (drops in stress ratio), G(r) encapsulates multiple kinematically distinct communities that are mediated by nodes corresponding to those grains in the shear band. This finding casts light on the dual and opposing roles of the shear band: a mechanism that creates powder keg divisions in the sample, while simultaneously acting as a mechanical link that transfers motion through such subdivisions moving in relative rigid-body motion.

IDIOMS WITH THE MEANING HUMAN ACTIVITY AS A SEGMENT OF VERBAL FIELD OF THE CONCEPT SECURITY

The article deals with formal and semantic peculiarities of the verbal field of the concept SECURITY, namely its part which is realized via idiomatic units with the common semantics of human activity. The content of the concept under analysis can be modeled into the following formula: SECURITY is the result of a subject’s activity (to secure) which aims at transforming the situation of danger into the situation of safety. Idioms are lexical units widely used for verbalizing the concept SECURITY, focusing mainly upon the situation danger. Various kinds of human activity and artefacts serve as source domain in idiomatic metaphoric nominations which comprise the verbal field of the concept SECURITY. Hunting, fishing and gambling are reflected in different images, embodied in the analyzed idioms. Such artefacts as boat, bridge, powder keg, armament, and millstones perform the same function.

TURKISH MINORITY IN BULGARIA: MAIN STAGES OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION

The Balkan region, known as the «powder keg of Europe», is one of the most controversial regions with complex tangle of ethnic groups and religions. The problem of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria has its roots directly in the creation of the Bulgarian nation-state in 1878. Initially, the Turks had sufficiently broad rights, but after World War II, their situation has steadily deteriorated. The reasons are linked with the international situation of Cold War — where Bulgaria and Turkey belonged to opposing blocs — and internal political and ideological factors. Broad criticism on the part of the international community has undergone so called «Revival Process» — a large-scale campaign of assimilation of Turkish and Muslim population in Bulgaria 1984–1989. Today Turkish ethnic group enjoys broad rights in education, religion,politically represented in parliament and is an integral part of Bulgarian society. In terms of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans of the 1990s, Bulgaria has demonstrated striking example of the successful integration of ethnic minorities into society.

Moments and Significance of Balkan Diplomacy at the Start of the Twentieth Century

Historically, the Balkan Peninsula is marked as an area where the Ottoman Empire made its influence known. The notion of Balkan space is often thought of in a negative way, being associated with the so called „Powder Keg of Europe”. At the start of the nineteenth century, the peninsula was divided by the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. One century later, the same lands are divided up by six states. No less than 11 wars and countless armed conflicts were necessary in order to get to this result. For the Europeans that lived at the start of the last century, the Balkans represented a terra incognita, a particular area, slightly explored, constantly avoided, carrying the burden of violence. A territory filled with terror and endless strife, conjuring up unpleasant images: political instability, secret societies, and atrocities. This study shows the manner in which diplomacy tried to play a major role in this region’s stability through its fundamental concepts (summits, international conferences, parliamentary diplomacy, the international activities of transnational and subnational entities, the unofficial diplomacy of non governmental elements, as well as the work put in by numerous international civil employees). Also, it will incline towards the last phase of the balance of power system, more specifically on its ending through the first Balkan war. Diplomacy is often mistaken for „foreign policy” or „external relations”, but the terms are not synonymous. Diplomacy is the main, yet not the only tool of foreign policy. On the other hand, foreign policy establishes goals, provides strategies and enforces measures that must be used in order for complete those goals. Diplomacy is therefore the main substitute for using violence, force or subversive tactics; it is the peaceful way in which two or more states can negotiate a common foreign policy.

The Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883: Weighing the Roles of Professor William Smith Forbes and Senator William James McKnight.

Effective Anatomical Acts transformed medical education and curtailed grave-robbing. William S. Forbes, Demonstrator of Anatomy at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, authored the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1867, but it was ineffective. In December of 1882, Forbes and accomplices were charged with grave-robbing. Forbes was acquitted in early 1883, but his accomplices were all convicted; nevertheless, these events precipitated a strengthened Anatomy Act in 1883. Forbes was crowned the Father of the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act and was revered by the Philadelphia medical community for his personal sacrifices for medical education; they even paid his legal fees. Over the remainder of his life, Forbes received many honors. However, there was a second major player, rural doctor William J. McKnight, a convicted grave-robber and State Senator. The evidence shows that Forbes precipitated the crisis, which was a racial powder keg, and then primarily focused on his trial, while McKnight, creatively working behind the scenes in collaboration with Jefferson, Anatomy Professor William H. Pancoast, used the crisis to draft and pass transformative legislation enabling anatomical dissection at Pennsylvania medical schools. While not minimizing Forbes suffering throughout these events, McKnight should be appropriately recognized for his initiative and contributions, which far exceeded those of Forbes.

Skoro Bałkany istnieją, lepiej ich nie wymyślać — między pragnieniem ucieczki do „EU-ropy” a „bałkanizacją Bałkanów”

Vesna Goldsworthy once stated that interest in the Balkans lasts as long as there are conflicts in the area. Furthermore, that interest is extremely superficial. Europeans prefer to fit inhabitants of the Balkans into lasting ‘popular’ stereotypes (clichés) rather than to become acquainted with them. On the one hand, the Balkan region is viewed as being the proverbial powder keg, an area suffering from the ‘eternal’ hatred of the nations inhabiting it and stained with the blood of their fratricidal strife; at the very least the region is a synonym of extreme retrogression and obscurantism, from whichonly European paternalism can save it. On the other hand—the brighter picture—the region is viewed almost like a ludic open-air folk museum, as in the films of Emir Kusturica. Those who are more inclined to hold the first view dream of the Balkans’ escape to ‘EU-rope’; the latter do not in principle oppose remaining in this idyllic land ‘flowing with rakia’. The aim of the article is to analyze the discourse concerning the Balkans in two dimensions of social life—politics and art.

Analysis of “Powder Keg Theory” in State Escape Statutes

Escape research has debunked the powder keg theory that all escapes are inherently violent and may explode into violence at any given time. The vast majority of escapes takes place from minimum secure facilities and do not involve force at time of escape or recapture. Nevertheless, federal defendants often receive unduly harsh sentences based on prior escape convictions because courts assume that the majority of escapes are violent for purposes of sentencing enhancement. This study analyzed all 50 U.S. state escape statutes to determine which states classify escapes in a manner consistent with the powder keg theory. Results indicated that the majority of state statutes neither concurred with the powder keg theory nor favored a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between escapes and potential violence. Policy implications of these findings and potential pathways for future escape research are discussed. This article concludes that criminal acts of escape must be reconsidered for sentencing purposes in relation to their potential violence, risks, and intentions.

Baltimore Health Department Helps Affected Citizens After Riots

Baltimore Health Department Helps Affected Citizens After Riots

Украина – бочка с порохом

Украина – бочка с порохом

Depoliticising the Balkans? International intervention(s) and economic development in Kosovo

Slavoj Zizek and Agon Hamza From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo, Kolektivi Materializmi Dialektik: Prishtine, 2013; 103 pp.: 9789951883528 (pbk) The charge of de-politicisation has long been a staple in leftist circles. Since John Harris coined the phrase, we often hear that the World Bank has been in the business of 'depoliticising development' (Harris 2002). Neoliberalism itself is frequently chided for denying or concealing its deeply political character. (1) At times, though, the argument from depoliticisation has been stretched to absurd proportions. In much of the post-modern literature, the study of development--or of anything else, for that matter--is reduced to a study of its 'discourse'. As a result, the material dimensions of international development --how developing countries are hardly benefttting from development interventions; how international capital has an axe to grind in this global 'industry'; how development practice may be redesigned to the benefit of the global South, etc.--are simply taken for granted, or even spitefully dismissed. The post-modern critique of ideology, just like the ideology it critiques, ends up obscuring, rather than illuminating, the social world. Loosely speaking, this punchy philosophical diptych steers clear of the fallacies of the post-modern turn. As such, it artfully demonstrates how the charge of depoliticisation can resonate also with those who maintain that materiality remains an important (if not the most important) dimension of the social world. Focusing on NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo and the process of post-war reconstruction, this book takes aim at the 'proliferation of discourses on the ethnicisation and culturalisation of ... injustice' (p. 76)--a phenomenon that Zizek and Hamza regard as an attempt to take politics out of the picture. According to the authors, the scholarship on the Balkans is overwhelmingly written by 'essentialists or culturologists' (p. 12), who explain virtually everything --from the dissolution of Yugoslavia to persistent economic underdevelopment--as a consequence of culture. Beginning in the late 1980s, pre-modern myths and neo-tribal passions supposedly resurfaced and re-ignited a long-simmering powder keg of interethnic strife and socioeconomic impoverishment. Engulfed by an irrational fever-pitch, the cultural imaginary of the Balkans stands in contrast to the rational-objective gaze of Western commentators--the likes of Noel Malcolm and Anna di Lellio--who set out to 'demystify' the Balkan spell of tribal myths, revealing the latter for what they really are, and explaining the supposed role of these phantasms in fuelling violence, conflict and poverty. The authors do not dwell on the intellectual origins of the culturalist discourse. Rather, their response is a call for re-politicisation: demystifying the very practice of 'myth demystification' (p. 79) in which Western intellectuals have engaged since the break-up of Yugoslavia. To their credit, Zizek and Hamza do not limit themselves to a critical discourse analysis. They also preoccupy themselves with the political economy of humanitarian intervention and post-conflict state-building, dissecting and re-politicising the irreducibly material dimensions of the social phenomena that the culturalist seeks to depoliticise and obscure. In particular, the authors set out to dismantle the two most influential arguments made in response to foreign intervention(s) in Kosovo: on the one hand, the liberal view that a well-meaning West violated Yugoslavia's sovereignty benevolently and legitimately in order to protect the human rights of Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian majority; and on the other, the view defended by the likes of Michael Parenti (2002), according to whom NATO--qua military arm of Western corporate capital--launched the 1999 intervention to bring down Europe's last line of resistance to neoliberal capitalism, namely Milosevic's Yugoslavia. …

Book Review: Childers, Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement, by Duane A. Smith

Book Review| August 01 2014 Book Review: Childers, Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement, by Duane A. Smith Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement. By Michael W. Childers. (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2012. 234 pp. $34.95) Duane A. Smith Duane A. Smith Fort Lewis College Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2014) 83 (3): 549–550. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2014.83.3.549 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Duane A. Smith; Book Review: Childers, Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement, by Duane A. Smith. Pacific Historical Review 1 August 2014; 83 (3): 549–550. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2014.83.3.549 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2014 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands ed. by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (review)

Reviewed by: Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands ed. by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz Brendan Karch Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Edited by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Pp. 544. Paper $37.00. ISBN 978-0253006356. Are modern Eastern Europe and Anatolia best understood as one large zone of borderlands? This tacit question underlies the deep and diverse scholarship in Shatterzone of Empires. One need only scan the table of contents to grasp the ambition of this edited volume: twenty-six contributions, many by leading scholars in the field, occupy [End Page 442] some 500 pages, spanning the mid-eighteenth century to the present, and covering (in today’s geography) western Poland to eastern Turkey. Rather than fruitlessly trying to summarize the many excellent contributions, this review will instead focus on the volume’s answer to the question posed at the outset. How, exactly, do the authors here define “borderlands”? Editors Omer Bartov and Eric Weitz call them in the introduction “regions intersected by frontiers that separate states,” but also “places of interaction” and “spaces-in-between, where identities are often malleable.” They are peripheries, far from centers of power, and also “constructs of the political imaginary and products of ideological fantasy” (1). If this seems multifaceted, the contributors only broaden the scope. Some authors, such as Patrice Dabrowski and Pamela Ballinger, focus on geographic separators: the Carpathians and the Adriatic, respectively. Many stick to concrete political borders, such as Philipp Ther on Upper Silesia, Paul Robert Magosci on Sub-Carpathain Rus, and Eyal Ginio on Eastern Thrace. Yet even here, one period’s borderland can be another era’s core national territory. The definition uniting many (but not all) of these scholars is that borderlands were multiethnic spaces with the potential for national-territorial conflict. Yet this broad standard encompasses so much of the former Habsburg, Russian, German, and Ottoman Empires that it becomes hard to say which imperial zones were then not borderlands. Indeed, this expansive definition best approximates the editors’ own conception. The implication is that a “vast swath” (1) of Europe and western Asia can be understood through a borderlands lens. What is the explanatory value, then, of the idea of borderlands? If the volume can be said to have a central claim, it is found in the title: the shattering of empires created zones of potential conflict where coexistence often gave way to violence. The outcome of this historical process—the creation of homogeneous nation-states through ethnic cleansing and genocide—is undisputed. Most of the contributors thus focus instead on causes. Here two broad schools of thought can be roughly distinguished. The first sees the multiethnic diversity of the borderlands itself as a source of potential violence; when subjected to the spark of aggressive nationalism, these zones reacted like lit powder kegs. Contributions by Gregor Thum on the German-Polish border, Alexander Prusin on Eastern Galicia, and Taner Akçam on the Young Turks most approximate this line of reasoning. These arguments tend to follow a long-established historiography in which nationalist forces shattered Europe’s old empires, in turn imperiling the multiethnic spaces that defied the logic of the modern nation-state. Cause and consequence are thus neatly tied together. Yet such interpretations are overshadowed in this volume by new waves of scholarship that emphasize other causes for the “shattering” of empires: Great Game politics, state-legitimated invention of new national frontiers, military occupation cultures, imperial ambitions (both territorial and nonterritorial), or economic incentives. Here the causal frames embrace local contexts, specific contingencies, and the [End Page 443] social construction of differences, rather than any enduring national-social traits of the borderlands themselves. The chapter by Peter Holquist on Russian violence in eastern Anatolia during World War I is notable for its brief but effective framing of these competing explanatory models. As Holquist writes, early Anglophone literature on shatterzones was most vigorously deployed in the context of British or American conflict zones with Russia, often emphasizing a clash of worldviews or civilizations. The concept of a shatterzone has...

The Metallurgical Study of Fort Ligonier Bayonet Sections, Hand Forged Spikes, and Copper Powder Keg Hoop Sections

The Metallurgical Study of Fort Ligonier Bayonet Sections, Hand Forged Spikes, and Copper Powder Keg Hoop Sections