Balkanism

The term ‘Balkanism’ has multilayered meaning. First, it can be understood as an academic discourse, defined by Maria Todorova (Imagining the Balkans, 1997), which represents a specific but separated variation of Saidian Orientalism. Here, the Balkan peninsula, mostly populated by Slavs, is being constructed as Europe’s (Western Europe) Other, that is a symbol for less civilized, primitive, irrational. Accordingly, Western Europe’s discourse needs the area with such a reputation to carry the role of a bridge between West and East. This concept was founded upon the legacies left by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empire, which created a binary opposition between the Balkan peninsula and Western Europe. Second, it is used generally in Western Europe, as an everyday concept to describe the Balkan peninsula negatively, alluding to corruption, specific mentality, primitivism, etc. Third, there is a phenomenon of considering of the peoples from the peninsula as less primitive themselves, and having an image of themselves as a in-between space, hybrid between East and West (self-Balkanism). Nowadays, outside the use of the term Balkanism in the academic or political discussion, people from the Balkan peninsula use it rather neutrally than negatively—more often than not even proudly—simply as a word to describe their characteristics, such as following: slow-paced living, coffee culture, religious, spontaneous, patriarchy, family-oriented communities, etc., in other words, with an opposite meaning than intended in the first place.