This article ethnographically follows the everyday life of a homo sacer —a young Roma woman who has lived her whole life in a camp for displaced persons. The camp has been built for Roma, Ashkalias, and Balkan Egyptians who in 1999 fled from the violence in Kosovo to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. The key aim of the article is to see what happens with the concepts of ‘ homo sacer ’ and ‘bare life’ when ethnographically engaged in the context of Southeastern Europe. The article argues that ethnographic fieldwork in urban settings reveals in what way a homo sacer has an everyday life and a complex sociopolitical existence, and that camps are urban formations that can be related to very different sociohistorical and political projects.

Urban Ethnography

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

The Politics of Simulation. Fake Repairs in a Serbian Industrial Town

Deana Jovanović

Page range: 27-44

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Abstract

The author explores reparations of urban sites in Bor, a copper processing town in eastern Serbia. She looks at recent attempts at reparations carried out by an industrial company in the context of the town’s and the company’s ‘revival’. She explores ethnographically how the reparations were seen as deceptions, temporary, partial, fake, and superficial, but simultaneously praised as ‘at least something’. The author argues that this ambivalence, which consisted of simultaneous positive and negative dispositions towards the promise the repairs held, resulted in people’s involvement in the ‘politics of simulation’ of the town’s and the copper company’s ‘revival’. She also shows how through people’s hope for order, and through their hope of being moral state subjects, the state became an object of emotional investment.

Urban Ethnography

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Postsocialist Informal Urbanism between Creativity and Power. Notes on Four Projects from Romania

Şerban Văetişi

Page range: 45-68

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Abstract

The author illustrates squatting, do-it-yourself urbanism, creative re-appropriation of public space, guerrilla gardening, and artistic occupy-type intervention as forms and evolutions of informal urbanism. By interpreting examples observed in two postsocialist Romanian cities the author comments on the thin boundary between informal and authorized urbanism, and between creativity and power; he interrogates also the key matter of access to the city, with its regulations, resources, and potentialities. His perspective implies an empirical and ethnographic approach to informality, which is analysed in the contexts of privatization logics, especially in relation to the reconfiguration of the public and the private which is so specific to postsocialist transformations. The contrast between grass-roots responses and official projects is seen as decisive in understanding strategies of representations, control of resources, and capital accumulation. Additionally the author suggests the relevance of theorizing such postsocialist urban processes in fruitful but critical comparison with other non-Western forms of urbanism, notably postcolonial ones.

Urban Ethnography

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

‘And When the Heart is Sick, the Whole Body is Sick.’ Repairing the Person and the Urban Fabric through Everyday Sufi Ethics in Postwar Sarajevo

Zora Kostadinova

Page range: 69-93

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Abstract

The author explores how the ritual religious practice of Sufism and the charismatic leadership of the sheikh play a role in ethical self-making and community-building in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. She traces how the Sufi concept of adab , or proper dervish conduct, represents at once a transcendent relationship with the Divine and urban civility. The author argues that Sufi practices in the care for the self represent an authentic response to the postwar and postsocialist ethical demand in the city of restoring urban social relationships. The processes analysed here reflect wider changes in what constitutes an Islamic authority in post-Yugoslav Bosnia, and the impact this has on the ongoing local debate on Islam as discursive tradition.

Urban Ethnography

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Constitutional Justice in Credit Crises. The Hungarian Case

Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz

Page range: 94-118

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Abstract

The economic crisis of 2008 brought about a rapid depreciation in the exchange rate of the Hungarian forint (HUF). Debtors in Hungary had borrowed money in foreign currencies—especially the Swiss franc—and now found themselves in a significantly deteriorating situation. The consequences of increased indebtedness reached all levels of society. On various grounds, consumers took out numerous civil law proceedings to challenge consumer loan agreements. Questions raised by these lawsuits were, several times, brought to Hungary’s Supreme Court, and were then taken to the legislature. The legislative acts and judicial decisions that ensued were subsequently reviewed by the Constitutional Court of Hungary. This article analyses the case law the Constitutional Court applied in this crisis situation, and brings out the lack of balancing capacity in the constitutional adjudication. Referring to the principles of basic Rule of Law, the author makes a critical assessment of the new constitutional ideas, measures and legal solutions that emerged.

Commentary

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

The Border Monster Refuses to Die

Marko Zajc

Page range: 119-130

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Abstract

The author contextualizes the Final Award issued on 29 June 2017 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on the Slovenian-Croatian border dispute, a dispute which began in 1991 when the two Yugoslav republics became independent states. After joining the European Union in 2004, Slovenia began to use its membership to attempt to force its neighbour to agree to its terms. In November 2009 the two countries signed an Arbitration Agreement that temporarily solved the problem. The Final Award of the Court of Arbitration in The Hague of June 2017 has not been acknowledged by Croatia, though, on the ground of an audio surveillance scandal in 2015 that involved a Slovenian arbitrator. The Slovenian side has advocated the Final Award of the Tribunal as the only legal, internationally binding, and “European” solution to the border question, while the Croatian side continues to ignore the tribunal’s disposition.

Book Reviews

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits. Post-Communist Historiography between Democratization and New Politics of History

Christel Zunneberg

Page range: 131-133

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Book Reviews

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Post-Conflict Europeanization and the War of Meanings. The Challenges of Eu Conditionality in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo

Gian Marco Moisé

Page range: 133-135

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Book Reviews

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Balkan Legacies of the Great War. The Past Is Never Dead

Claudia Mayr-Veselinović

Page range: 135-136

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Book Reviews

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

NATO and the Western Balkans. From Neutral Spectator to Proactive Peacemaker

Roos Hoebens

Page range: 136-138

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Book Reviews

Publicly Available March 20, 2018

Feminist Activism at War. Belgrade and Zagreb Feminists in the 1990s

Chiara Bonfiglioli

Page range: 139-141

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About this journal

The quarterly Comparative Southeast European Studies (COMPSEES) evolved into its new format from that of its predecessor Südosteuropa. Journal of Politics and Society. From 2021 onwards, it is published both digitally, in Open Access, and in print, thereby becoming more easily accessible and even more visible internationally, not least in Southeastern Europe itself. Before long, a digital repository of Südosteuropa will be available to everyone.

Comparative Southeast European Studies will continue to be a forum for scholars in Political Science, Sociology, Contemporary History, Anthropology, Economics, International Relations, Law Studies, Gender Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and related disciplines. Taking a comparative and broad multidisciplinary perspective it will explore critical processes and societal issues related to　the area bounded by the eastern Adriatic, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. We use two formats to showcase research. There are peer-reviewed research articles and a shorter format open to other text genres, which are presented under headings such as ‘Commentary’, ‘Interview’, ‘Background’, ‘Policy Analysis’, ‘Film in Focus’, ‘Debate’, ‘Spotlight’, ‘Book Symposium’, ‘The Making of...’, for example. This is a flexible section allowing us to address more immediately pertinent political, social, cultural, and academic matters. In addition, the Journal also features a book review section.

The new name Comparative Southeast European Studies is the logical next step in the Journal’s evolution. After it was founded in 1952, for more than half a century its predecessor Südosteuropa served as a well-established policy advice journal monitoring events in the region, before in 2007 taking a turn towards becoming a research-oriented multidisciplinary forum of the social sciences. Since 2014 the Journal has been published exclusively in English. We have continued to work towards improving its quality, including by addressing the citation indices relevant in the field, as they increase the pool of potential authors. A rigorous double-blind peer review regime has guided us while we have become more selective in what we publish. We prioritise work that is empirically and methodologically sound, well-written and jargon-free, thereby fostering interdisciplinary scholarly communication. We remain committed to broadening the range of the research we publish, while welcoming both emerging and established scholars to publish with us. Comparative Southeast European Studies strives to consolidate its reputation as one of the major area studies journals focusing on Southeastern Europe. We encourage transnational and entangled comparative perspectives, acknowledging that any ‘area’, any geographical construct, functions in its transareal, indeed global, relations.

We welcome both single manuscript submissions and proposals for guest-edited thematic sections. We look forward to working with you.

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Comparative Southeast European Studies is published by De Gruyter on behalf of © The Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies 2022