Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origins of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans (review)

Victor Roudometof's principal claim in this monograph, originally written as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh, is that Balkan rivalries are traceable to the process of the integration of the Ottoman Empire into the Western European system of nation-states, a process that he subsumes under the heading of globalization. Hence, from the very beginning he disputes the myth, popularized by the Western media in tandem with conservative Balkan intellectuals and writers, of the Balkans as the place of primordial hatreds and ethnic antagonisms that hearken back hundreds of years. On the contrary, Roudometof shows that, far from having their origin in the depths of antiquity, Balkan rivalries are of recent vintage, no older than 150 years. According to the author, they are a direct product of the nineteenth-century Balkan communities' having to conform to the norms and values of the dominant global system, of their having "to mimic Western history."

Using a classification devised by Held et al., Roudometof divides the globalization of the Balkans into three periods: early modern (1500 to 1840), modern (1840 to 1945), and post-1945 contemporary globalization. He argues that the pattern of Ottoman relations with the West, established in the period of early modern globalization, had a profound effect on the socioeconomic relations within the empire itself. I think that Roudometof could have been even more explicit in drawing the negative consequences for the Ottomans. It seems reasonable to conclude that frequent trade deficits and fiscal crises, arising out of dealings between the West and the Ottoman Empire, undermined the empire's stability, especially regarding the relatively tranquil coexistence of two major religious groups, the Muslims and the Christians. Roudometof chronicles how the local Muslim notables, or ayas, began rebelling against the central authorities and imposed stricter rules and heavier taxes on the Christian peasantry, causing resentment and inspiring the formation of bandit groups. At the same time, interaction with the West led to the establishment of a fairly wealthy Christian, Greek-speaking merchant class, which led to conflicts with the poorer but politically entrenched Muslim elite. However, it seems that these essentially economic struggles could have been resolved within the Ottoman framework had it not been for another intrusion from the West, this time in terms of a new cultural-ideological framework—the framework of nation-state and nationalism.

The author rightly rejects the simplistic division between the "good" Western and "bad" Eastern nationalism. Yet this fatal dichotomy, which has wrecked many otherwise quite persuasive theories of nationalism, resurfaces in his book as well in the distinction between nationalism as a discourse of citizenship and nationalism as a discourse of nationhood.

Nationalism as a discourse of citizenship emphasizes the equality of rights and duties of all members of a political community, while nationalism as a discourse of nationhood emphasizes particular cultural configurations at the expense of others. The former type would be appropriate to a multiethnic polity, while the latter obviously would not. While I agree with Roudometof that this is the case, I nevertheless consider as questionable the idealization of the Anglo-American system as the locus of a discourse of citizenship. There is a great deal of literature of life in American inner cities (such as Zinn's or Parenti's) that raises serious doubts about citizenship equality. I doubt that nationalism as a genuine discourse of citizenship exists in any contemporary nation-state, and it seems necessary to designate this (elusive) discourse formation by another name, if only to bring back that old-fashioned term, cosmopolitanism, cosmos as one's polity.

One of the most exciting aspects of Roudometof's work is that, contrary to the expectations of many Balkan experts (with or without credentials), he shows that there have in fact been certain articulations of a discourse of citizenship specific to...