'Western Balkans': Political context and the media usage
By accessing the content analysis of media archives, available both on the Internet presentations of the most significant and most influential media, press agencies, web search engines, and official public institutions, international government and non-government organizations, we will make an attem...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Serbian Sociological Association, Belgrade
2010-01-01
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| Series: | Sociološki Pregled |
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| Online Access: | http://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0085-6320/2010/0085-63201004503S.pdf |
| Summary: | By accessing the content analysis of media archives, available both on the Internet presentations of the most significant and most influential media, press agencies, web search engines, and official public institutions, international government and non-government organizations, we will make an attempt to point to political conditioning, appearances and uses, as well as political etymology of the term Western Balkans. The attention will also be called to the fact that the term has its origin in Anglo-Saxon political and historiographical tradition, through the examples of its use, as well as to the similarities of political relations which bring to its applicability. By analyzing the content of media inscriptions, reports, documents, official announcements, authorial reviews and analyses, it came to a conclusion that Western Balkans occurs as a regional reference in particular historical and political circumstances and that geographical frames it is being used within, could be located outside the time frames and there are specified the particularities of its use. We will demonstrate that through the analysis of the political context and media usage, Western Balkans could be interpreted on more than one level. Western Balkans can at the same time represent both a terminological construction and a regional reference which expresses the indecisiveness of the West on social and cultural properties of the Balkans and the founding of Balkan cultures as immanently European, but at the same time the means of measurement, which is not only the determination of regionalism, but the determination of historical and political moment likewise. Besides, Western Balkans could also be interpreted as a mean of practical methodology and classification of naming the societies on the Balkans, which are the only outside the European Union frames, but also stand for the synchronization of the Balkanistic discourse with current political and historical circumstances and processes. This only goes to confirm the superiority of the West in producing dominant discourses and their objects so as to determine positions and assign connotative contents within the very same discourses. |
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| ISSN: | 0085-6320 2560-4880 |