[ecrea] cfp: Europe Unfinished: EU and the W/Restern Balkans in a Time of Crisis

Call for papers

Europe Unfinished: EU and the W/Restern Balkans in a Time of Crisis

Editors: Nebojša Blanuša and Zlatan Krajina (Faculty of Political 
Science, University of Zagreb).

The book explores the political, cultural and communicational aspects of 
EU’s enlargement towards the East, in the context of the recent entry of 
its new member state Croatia, and many others in the Balkans, waiting in 
the wings.

At a time when crisis, in various forms, has taken the status of 
permanence, and when trans- and intra-European migration has come to 
serve the elites as an occasion to question the future of 
multiculturalism, new candidates, mainly in the Balkans, offer a rather 
different vision of the unified Europe. For the ex-Yugoslav countries in 
particular (Europe’s old ‘inner others’ in the Balkans), the EU serves 
as a desired escape from the burdens of the peninsula traditionally 
connoted as ‘troubled’ (lawless and undemocratic) into what is perceived 
as an ordered and prosperous Central and Western Europe. ‘European-ness’ 
has become a token of exchange in a symbolic economy of accession as 
much as a flexible geographical appellation. Following the bloody 
dissolution of Yugoslavia, and a rocky transitional justice and 
democratisation, Croatia’s effort (2003-2013) to ‘exit’ the Balkans’ and 
‘enter’ ‘Europe’ has been marked by the EU’s endeavour to ‘train’ the 
Balkan newcomer, and attain, in return, a rare but much needed 
expression of optimism about the prospects of the EU project itself.

In 2013, Croatia was the first Western Balkan country to enter after 
Slovenia in 2004, and Serbia has recently started the accession 
negotiations. We ask whether these developments constitute a 
transformation of the Balkans as they have been known (into Southeastern 
Europe? Western and Eastern ‘balkanised’ Balkans?), what does the entry 
of one country from the region into the EU means for others (tougher 
criteria?, optimism?), and what has made the EU Croatians’, Serbians’, 
Bosnians’, Montenegrins’, Kosovar’s, Macedonians’, and Turks’ preferred 
home for the future? By extension, how has Euro-optimism taken shape in 
Ukraine? Furthermore, if the EU (a political union) is routinely equated 
with Europe (the continent), and European-ness is given powerful, if 
changing, semantic charge (a trope of modernity, progress, and boundary 
maintenance), what is the role of media in the constitution of the EU as 
a ‘space of identity’ (as coined by David Morley and Kevin Robins)? In 
the context of the latest, Croatian accession, and the recent start of 
negotiations with Serbia, does the recursive stretching of the EU’s 
borders change or reproduce the traditional West/East divide and its 
politics of borders?

Authors are invited to submit papers dealing with but not restricted to 
the following key issues:

• The complex relationship between Europe, the EU and its various inner 
and outer Others, as political entities, historical trajectories, 
geographical locations, social and cultural phenomena and practices, in 
the context of the accession processes in the Western and ‘Restern’ Balkans

• The interplay of media representations of Europe and its various 
(Oriental or Balkan) Others; policies and institutional incentives for 
the creation of inter-European ‘mediaspheres’; and the everyday 
practices of European citizens and migrants concerning their belonging 
within, across and beside the EU

• The institutional and cultural transformations involved in any of the 
EU’s waves of enlargements – in relation to the gradual inclusion of the 
Balkans into the EU

Successful proposals are expected to adopt:

• A critical perspective, assuming that what is analysed articulates 
certain power relations between the EU’s institutions, states, regions, 
political elites, media and ordinary people

• A multidimensional perspective, whereby Europe exists at once as an 
idea, a continent, a system of representation, a system of legislation 
and economy, and a lived reality

• A methodological and intellectual flexibility, in transgressing 
disciplinary boundaries, and innovative (unconventional) approaches to 
research and presentation of argument

Papers can be based on empirical research or on a theoretical discussion 
addressing any of the above issues. We welcome both conventional 
scholarly papers and creative presentations involving visual methods; 
unusual approaches and interdisciplinary ventures (politics, political 
economy, media and cultural studies, human geography, history); and 
contributions from authors not necessarily affiliated with academic 
institutions.

Deadline for abstracts (400-500 words) is 1 May 2014. Abstracts and 
short author bios

should be sent to (nblanusa /at/ fpzg.hr) and (zkrajina /at/ fpzg.hr) . Successful 
submissions will be notified by 1 June 2014. Deadline for full paper (up 
to 6000 words, including references) submission will be 1 December 2014.


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