Book Presentation – Making and Remaking the Balkans
U Centru za jugoistočnoeuropske studije (CSEES) Sveučilišta u Grazu u ponedjeljak, 4. studenog 2019. održat će se predstavljanje knjige Roberta C. Austina “Making and Remaking the Balkans: Nations and States since 1878”.
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Book Presentation – Making and Remaking the Balkans
With more than 25 years since the collapse of communism, the end of the wars and billions of dollars in aid, the Balkans are still characterized by corruption, state capture, and decidedly unmodern states that are often either weak or authoritarian. Taking the contemporary Balkans as a starting point, Making and Remaking the Balkans studies the region’s history combined with observations based on more than twenty years of field experience.
Robert C Austin is an Associate Professor at the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. In the past, Austin was a Tirana-based correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; a Slovak-based correspondent with The Economist Group of Publications; and a news writer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. Austin has written articles for The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Southeast European Times, Orbis, East European Politics and Societies and East European Quarterly along with numerous book chapters and two books published separately in Tirana and Prishtina. In addition to his most recent book, Making and Remaking the Balkans, he is the also the author of Founding a Balkan State (2012).
04.11.2019 16:00 – 17:30
Zentrum für Südosteuropastudien
Universität Graz
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Making and Remaking the Balkans: Nations and States since 1878
By Robert C. Austin
2019
With more than 25 years since the collapse of communism, the end of the wars and billions of dollars in aid, the Balkans are still characterized by corruption, state capture, and decidedly unmodern states that are often either weak or authoritarian. Taking the contemporary Balkans as a starting point, Making and Remaking the Balkans studies the region’s history combined with observations based on more than twenty years of field experience.
Primarily concerned with current issues in the Balkans since 1989, this book explains why the region has endured such a prolonged and fraught transition to democracy and eventual membership in the European Union. The young and educated have largely left. Governmental crisis and economic stagnation is the norm and much-needed regional cooperation has been suppressed by renewed nationalism. Wars on corruption have proved to be largely rhetorical. Making and Remaking the Balkans offers a systematic study of the issues the entire region faces as it struggles to complete the European integration process at a time when the European Union faces bigger problems elsewhere.
Reviews
“To call modern Balkan history complicated is a euphemism. Austin navigates the reader through the volatile politics of Balkan state-building. He makes a crucial point: while the people of the region crave normality, political elites again and again fail them. European integration of the region is the only remedy. Garnished with unique insights from Austin’s many travels to the region, the book provides essential reading for anyone interested in this part of Europe.”
Ulf Brunnbauer, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany
“If you want to make sense of today’s Europe, the best thing you can do is read history, and in particular good books on the history of the Balkans. Robert Austin has written exactly such a book. It is well informed, sympathetic but not sentimental, a book that allows us to see the past in the present. It is a book by someone who has made understanding the Balkans his intellectual vocation.”
Ivan Krastev, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Author Information
Robert C. Austin is an associate professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Making Nations and States
2 Good News, Bad News: Before and After 1989
3 Hero-Free Wars and Ethnic Purity
4 Albania Implodes, Kosovo Arms
5 Contested Heroes: Alexander the Great, Mother Teresa, and the Republic of Macedonia
6 To Europe, for Some: Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia
Epilogue: Greater This or Greater That, Alone or in Europe
Guide to Further Readings
Index
https://utorontopress.com/us/making-and-remaking-the-balkans-2#