Vasiliki P. Neofotistos

Beyond Stereotypes: Violence and the Porousness of Ethnic Boundaries in the Republic of Macedonia

In this article, the author explores the social construction of local classifications and their work in the Republic of Macedonia. Macedonians and Albanians construe classifications of their social world that are modeled on ethnicity, but at the same time readily violate them. By deploying the classificatory principles kultura and besa (widely glossed as “culture” and “trustworthiness”, respectively), local actors can render ethnic boundaries porous and incorporate selected individuals of different ethnic origin within their ethnic communities. The different degrees of social inclusion within the Macedonian and Albanian ethnic communities are examined and it is argued that the porousness of ethnic boundaries can be indicative of the ways in which actors experience the social world and their position in it. The processes that are described in this article shed light on how so-called “inter-ethnic tensions” can be negotiated in daily life and how local society, at first sight fraught with negative ethnic stereotypes, can prove resilient towards ethnic violence.

“The Balkans’ Other within”: Imaginings of the West in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the case study of the Republic of Macedonia, I explore how people who live in a realm conventionally cast as insufficient of “the European Self” imagine “the West”. Such imaginings are important because they are intertwined with negotiations of nationhood and citizenship. I argue that in local constructions of the global social order, Macedonia emerges in an interstitial position between “the Balkans” and “the West” as “the Balkans’ Other Within”. Social actors craft this position out of Western hegemonic constructions of the Balkans as a socio‐political anomaly and portray “the Other within” (Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise. The case study of Macedonia allows us to refine the concepts of “Balkanism” by underlining local perspectives on the promise that “the West” carries for the Balkans and “Orientalism” by emphasizing the possibilities that the construction of the Orient charts for the future advancement or demise of the Self.

The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia

Introduction 1. Critical Events 2. The Eruption of the 2001 Conflict 3. Living in a Confusing World 4. Performing Civility 5. When the Going Gets Tough 6. Claiming Respect Epilogue Appendix: Ohrid Framework Agreement and the 2001 Constitutional Amendments List of Abbreviations Notes Glossary References Index Acknowledgments

Going Home to Pakistan: Identity and Its Discontents in Southeastern Europe

In this article I explore the claim that post-independence Macedonia is a cornerstone of European civilization (a traditional Greek claim) and analyze efforts to assert the countrys position in the international arena as a “modern” and authentically Western state deserving of membership in the European Union. Such efforts involve the establishment of ties between Macedonians and the Hunzukuts, who live on the remote Hindu Kush Mountains in Pakistan and claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great. I also analyze comparable initiatives, sponsored in recent years by the Greek state, to prove ties between Greeks and the Kalasha, who also live in remote areas of Pakistan and believe that they are descended from Alexander the Great. Greece and post-independence Macedonia offer us insights into the populist underpinnings of the nationalist promotion of a European identity presented as rooted in the East.

Cultural Intimacy and Subversive Disorder: The Politics of Romance in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the example of intimate relations between ethnic Albanian men and ethnic Macedonian women in the Republic of Macedonia, I explore the utility of Michael Herzfelds invaluable insights into the interconnections among state power, cultural intimacy, and subversive disorder in states where different groups compete for state power. In these states, the absence of conditions that are conducive to the production of cultural intimacy points to the articulation of the state with socially constructed and embedded understandings of what might count as just, proper, and legitimate official response to violations of moral canon.

On the ISIL attacks in Western Europe and elsewhere

In this guest editorial, the author reflects on the inequitable ways in which ISIL attacks are covered in the media, between the West and the rest.

On Agency and the Ethnographic Project

There is much that I appreciate in Susana Narotzky’s “The Project in the Model: Reciprocity, Social Capital, and the Politics of Ethnographic Realism” (CA 48:403–27). Drawing on her work in Spain, the author problematizes the concepts of reciprocity, embeddedness, and social capital in the recent anthropological literature and makes a number of valuable points regarding the politics of the production of scholarly knowledge, the tension between specificity and abstraction in the generation of anthropological concepts, and the need for historicity in ethnographic writing. Although I wholeheartedly agree with her argument for using “reflexive historical realism” in addressing the political projects that we promote through our writings and to enable scientific comparison, I am skeptical about her treatment of agency, an issue that in my opinion has not been addressed adequately in either the article or the commentaries accompanying its publication. Specifically, it seems to me that Narotzky questions critical engagement with the theoretical models produced by scholarly work. While she argues that the social reality that ethnographers construct is enmeshed in multiple conceptions of reality that are held by the subjects of fieldwork research, she maintains that the reality produced by scholars ultimately provides the structure that allows for social and political action favoring capitalist development. She suggests, for example, that the concepts of reciprocity, embeddedness, and social capital have become hegemonic and devoid of historical specificity in economic anthropology and that they promote neoliberal capitalism and the reduction of state control over economic activities. Despite or rather because of their abstractness, these concepts allegedly create a framework that prevents social actors from articulating a discourse on local specificities and constrains them to pursue the path of Western capitalist development instead. Her depiction of social reality rests on the proposition that when social scientists who work with economic development agencies such as the World Bank use the terms “reciprocity,” “embeddedness,” or “social capital,” they promote an understanding of social relations in market terms and, most importantly, negate the possibility of the existence of alternative social relations. Narotzky’s paradigm also presupposes that subjective action can be conditioned only by the social reality produced by theory.