The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World

Foreign Affairs
Danforth, an anthropologist, takes one through the ferociously juxtaposed claims and counterclaims, and explains why the issues set people off with such intensity.


Lou Panov, The Boston Book Review
Loring Danforth humanizes the Macedonian conflict, shows us real people as they live this conflict, and makes clear that, despite its unique features, this struggle over ethnic and national identity is shared with other groups throughout the world. A good, rapid read filled with the fruit of firstrate, onthescene digging into people's lives.


Review
Loring Danforth humanizes the Macedonian conflict, shows us real people as they live this conflict, and makes clear that, despite its unique features, this struggle over ethnic and national identity is shared with other groups throughout the world. A good, rapid read filled with the fruit of first-rate, on-the-scene digging into people's lives.


Book Description
Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians. The Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and insists that all Macedonians are Greeks, while Macedonians vehemently assert their existence as a unique people. Here Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in the process of building a nation. The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and in the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. Danforth focuses on the transnational dimension of the "global cultural war" taking place between Greeks and Macedonians both in the Balkans and in the diaspora. He analyzes two issues in particular: the struggle for human rights of the Macedonian minority in northern Greece and the campaign for international recognition of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia. The book concludes with a detailed analysis of the construction of identity at an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy. People from the same villages, members of the same families, living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne have adopted different national identities.


From the Publisher
Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians. The Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and insists that all Macedonians are Greeks, while Macedonians vehemently assert their existence as a unique people. Here Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in the process of building a nation. The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and in the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians. Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in building a nation. The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and in the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices