Traditions and Transitions folk narrative in the contemporary world
16-20
July 2001 The University of Melbourne, Australia
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Traditions and Transitions folk narrative in the contemporary world |
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Magdalena Elchinova is unable to attend the congress and present this paper.
The Balkans are known as one of the political hot spots
of Europe, an arena where many ethnic, religious and national conflicts
continue to be played out right up to present times. If one tries to generalize
as to the nature of these conflicts, the first definition to occur is that
these are identity conflicts, driven by the striving of different collectives
to define, declare or impose upon the others (the neighbours) their own
identities. Constructing and expressing identity is often a difficult and
painful process, and the Balkans are full of groups, including the Macedonians,
with hybrid or ill-defined identities.
Drawing examples from a number of life histories recorded over the last ten
years, this paper describes various ways of ‘being Macedonian’ and presents the
historical, regional, ethnic and national dimensions of such identification.
The characteristic traits of ‘Macedonianness’ are discussed, including kinship,
origin, language, religion and tradition. These are viewed in the context of
constructing images of the Macedonians, both by the communities that share
these characteristics and the various others around them. Consequently, some
culturally-specific modes of setting and lifting boundaries between these
counterparts are outlined. The paper also comments upon the role of national
and other myths in the construction and expression of Macedonian identity.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | main abstract index | main congress page |
| N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |