240513 SE Re-Imagining the Balkans & Eastern Europe - Anthropological Perspectives, Debates & Comparisons (P3) (2021S)

Aims

Eastern and South-Eastern Europe/the Balkans represent an ascending field of inquiry for anthropologists. Especially due to the collapse of real-socialism, the violent conflicts in the Balkans and the on-going process of EU-Eastern Enlargement, the number of anthropological contributions on this part Europe in recent two decades has been continuously growing. Moreover, anthropological inquiries into eastern and southeastern fringes of Europe have generated new and innovative ways of thinking about core concepts of anthropology, such as identity, hybridity, borders, the state, civil society, history/temporality, diversity, violence, modernity, migration etc. As indicated in the title, this course will thus provide the students with the opportunity to re-assess both the knowledge about this part of Europe and important concepts and research fields in anthropology, as well as provide inputs for potential BA and MA Theses. As one of its further aims is to communicate to students the dialectics of theory and empirical knowledge, the contents of the course will comprise both theoretical and ethnographic contributions/case studies and thus encourage the students to apply a comparative perspective as one of the core tools of anthropological inquiry.

Contents

The course will offer a substantial overview over older and more recent anthropological explorations of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. These will be developed against the background of the seminal theoretical perspectives on Othering/Balkanism and the Anthropology of (Post)Socialism, which have strongly marked the way the Balkans have been (critically) explored by anthropologists. The critique of the Balkanist imagery – constructing this part of Europe merely as an “incomplete self” of Western Europe – as well as the essential critique of neoliberal transition reforms precisely anthropologists (of postsocialism) have formulated in their work on Eastern Europe and the Balkans, will continuously inform the course. Furthermore the course will continuously refer to relevant approaches to gender and the importance of historical legacies for exploring current transformations in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

The course will be structured along the following thematic units: “Othering” and Imagining Eastern Europe and the Balkans – The “East”, Balkanism, Hellenism; The “socialist Other” – early anthropological work during Real-Socialism; Anthropology of Postsocialism – Core Approaches; Property Relations and (Moral) Economies; Kinship, State and Civil Society; Gender, Patriarchy and Feminism; (Post)-conflict, Gender and Transitional Justice; Religion, (Ethno)Nationalism and Identity Politics; History and Memory; Identity Diversity/Multiculturalism; Exploring (Forced) Migration in South(Eastern) Europe – Past and Present; Anthropology of Border(lands) – (South)Easteuropean Cases.

Didactic Methods
The course will unfold as a combination of theoretical inputs, exemplified by case studies and films, guest lecture(s) as well as student presentations and continuous discussions.