Conference | Constructing the Balkans, De-Constructing Ourselves

“The Balkans” brings to mind concepts such as ethnic separatism, religious intolerance, corruption and violence. But to what extent are these things intrinsically “Balkan,” or are they in fact problems common to the Balkans, Europe and even the United States in recent years?

Consider the following—more than a decade after mosques and minarets were being destroyed in Bosnia and Kosovo, their construction is being banned and disputed from Switzerland to Slovenia to New York City. In 1950, the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina banned the burqa; sixty years later, Belgium and France are doing likewise. Various ethnic nationalisms led to the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, yet today similar nationalist and separatist movements are gaining strength in a number of EU member states.

Despite the Balkans’ reputation for violence, homicide and adult male penal incarceration rates in most US cities are higher than those in southeastern Europe. Despite the Balkans’ reputation for corruption, recent revelations of systemic corruption in international financial markets make the pyramid schemes in Albania and Serbia during the 1990s seem minor by comparison. And whereas images from detention camps in Bosnia during the 1990s provoked deserved outrage--one American television network, for instance, aired a program on Bosnia entitled “Land of the Demons,” and former US Secretary of State Warren Christopher famously called the Bosnian war “a problem from hell”—images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo remind us of how difficult it is even for the most advanced democracies to abide by international human rights conventions in the midst of war, societal breakdown, and state disintegration.

Participants: Volker Berghahn (Columbia University), Dusan Bjelic (University of Maine), Evangelos Calotychos (Columbia University), Vesna Goldsworthy (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Robert Hayden (University of Pittsburgh).