Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation - Hardcover

Dušan I. Bjelic is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Southern Maine.

"This challenging anthology is based on the premise that geographic identity conveys a rich and revealing intellectual coherence... recommended. Zachary T. Irwin Library Journal

"This volume's greatest attraction is the way it so wonderfully illustrates the Balkans' baroque complexity, to some the region's insurmountable handicap and to others, including myself, its inimitable charm. Focused largely on philosophical and cultural studies, the contributors make use of a variety of approaches, thanks to the diversity of their backgrounds. Taken as a whole, this volume is learned, erudite, and sometimes contradictory, as behooves a collective work. And it is, thankfully, always passionate as well."--Maria Todorova, Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and author of Imagining the BalkansPlease note: Slight change to author's affiliation

"This is a book of quite extraordinary range, depth, and topical importance which is sure to gain a wide readership within and beyond the Anglo-American academic community. I have no doubt that it will provoke some intensive (even heated) debate both among specialist scholars of Balkan history and in the wider academic, political, and journalistic community. It should certainly take its place as required reading for students in cultural studies and related disciplines where the postmodern 'turn' has often gone along with a tendency to seek refuge in facile slogans and sweeping pseudo-historical claims. It is just this kind of safely orthodox 'radical' thinking that the contributors set out to challenge."--Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy, University of Cardiff, Wales

"Balkan as Metaphor marks the emergence of a powerful new approach to the study of Southeastern Europe. By turns polemical and lyrical, the essays in this volume also hold a mirror up to the West. Few dynamics defined the 1990s more symbolically than the one between these two regions. This book documents the imprint of that relationship on the contemporary intellectual life of the Balkans."--Laura Secor, Deputy Editor, The American Prospect, and author of numerous articles about the Balkans