[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: [balkans] Book Review: Kourvetaris et al. (eds), The NewEmilianKavalski

[Agron Alibali]

Balkan Academic News Book Review 1/2003

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George A. Kourvetaris, Victor Roudometof, Kleomenis Koutsoukis, Andrew G. Kourvetaris (eds.), The New Balkans: Disintegration and Reconstruction. Boulder: East European Monographs, 2002. 468pp., 62 USD, ISBN 0880334983 (hardback).

Reviewed by Emilian Kavalski (University of Loughborough, UK) Email: E.R.Kavalski at lboro.ac.uk

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The collapse of the Soviet and East European communist regimes (if anticipated at all) has never been expected to be a peaceful affair; however, the violent forms it took in the southeastern corner of Europe challenged and shocked out of their place quite a number of seemingly well-lodged preconceptions. Thus, making sense of the Balkan “crises” of the 1990s has been the topic of a number of recent analyses. The New Balkans: Disintegration and Reconstruction comes from a similar vein of scholastic explorations, while, at the same time, attempts to proffer itself as the authoritative voice in the field of Southeast European studies encompassing the dual nature of post-Cold War conflicts in the Balkans. On the one hand the volume focuses on the destruction and disintegration of the established pattern of statehood in the region. On the other, it endeavors to evince a new hope as well as prospects for building and reconstructing better futures for its peoples. In spite of the commendable effort as well as the collection of essays by established names in the field, this volume (like many other before it) fails to achieve its self-imposed goals and, most importantly, does not succeed to contribute new perspectives both on the origins of the current situation in the Balkans, let alone insightful ideas for chartering its prospects.

At first glance, the volume seems well-organized into three sections exploring: (i) the historic background of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans (which is also the largest part in the book, containing eight of the sixteen essays); (ii) economic and civil society development; and (iii) security issues. Perhaps, this structure outlines the editors’ rendition of the triple-transition problematique. Divided in this way, the volume offers itself as a promising suggestion for the study of the Balkans. However, such aura is quickly dispelled when one embarks on perusing the pages of this volume.

One of the main reasons for the misgivings of The New Balkans derives from the editorial mismanagement of its structure. It is obvious that the majority of contributors (if not all) take the term “Balkans” in its wider (or what some might call its “geographic”) meaning; that is: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and the states that emerged after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, an overwhelming number of essays (ten out of sixteen) focus on the issues and problems of the so-called “Western Balkans”. Thus, a more appropriate title for the book would have been The New Post-Yugoslav Space, since it is the disintegration and reconstruction of Yugoslavia that is at the heart of the book. Said otherwise, The New Balkans fails to throw significant light on the post-communist (or as the editors would probably call it “post-emotional”) transition of the region towards Euro-Atlantic structures. Instead the volume remains mired in some quasi-suggestions and semi-conclusions on the future of the “region”, without making it clear is it the wider Balkans, or the particular post-Yugoslav environment that it has in mind.

Another reason for the shortcomings of this volume is the fact that the bulk of the contributions were originally written for a 1996 special issue of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Although, that it is very often refreshing to be confronted with the conclusions and suggestions of the recent past (especially when revisiting studies undertaken during the height of the Yugoslav crises) The New Balkans does not make the grade in rendering its explorations into the language of the post-Milosevic and post-Tudjaman “Western Balkans” and a closer and deeper association into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for “Southeastern Europe”. In fact, the volume overlooks the important implication of such linguistic designation and, hence, division of the region, which emerged in the mid-1990s. In effect, it completely overlooks the suggestion that the Balkans is a region not because of its own awareness as such, but because of the external perception of the region’s political, economic and social environment.

A third major flaw of the volume is the thinly veiled political agenda that it seems to drive forward. Its premise is an apparently uncritical usage of the volume’s terminology (i.e. “nation” and “power”). The New Balkans fails to account for the altered nature and especially content of such emotionally and ideologically laden concepts. In other words, the volume lacks a cognitive exploration of the ideas and concepts at the core of its terms (as is the case with the lacking explanation and understanding of the perception of “the Balkans”). This organizational failure leads the editors to put forward the claim (of dubious academic value) that “the current fervor of Albanian nationalists and that of Bulgarian nationalists during the pre-World War II period” are similar (p. 9). Strange as it may sound with its reminiscence of primordial essentialism such statements are common throughout the pages of the volume (see for instance the chapter on the name of Macedonia). Thus, one is left with the question what kind of reconstruction the volume would like to suggest for the Balkans: one that is going to bring the region closer to the Euro-Atlantic organizations and standards, or one that is going to plunge it even further into “nationalist” fervor? Moreover, such statements put into question the real motivations of the editors of the volume?

These are just few of the ideas one gets after reading The New Balkans. The volume fails to live up to the expectations that it sets out and perhaps the field of Balkan Studies could have done better without its presence. Strikingly enough, there is nothing new that The New Balkans offers to its readers. However, since it already exists probably the volume could be of some use as a reference source to students of the region, but one that needs to be approached with knowledge of its weaknesses.

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This an earlier book reviews are available at: www.seep.ceu.hu/balkans

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© 2002 Balkan Academic News. This review may be distributed and reproduced electronically, if credit is given to Balkan Academic News and the author. For permission for re-printing, contact Balkan Academic News. 

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