Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreciations
- INTRODUCTION: The Europeanization of Bulgarian Society: A Long-Lasting Political Project
- CHAPTER ONE Institution-Building, Political Culture and Identity in Bulgaria: The Challenge of ‘Europeanization’
- CHAPTER TWO Appropriations of Bulgarian Literature in the West: From Pencho Slaveikov to Iordan Iovkov
- CHAPTER THREE Communism and Cold War in Bulgaria: The Absence of Europe?
- CHAPTER FOUR Bulgarian Turks During the Transition Period
- CHAPTER FIVE Women's Identity and Social Policy in Bulgaria Before and After 1989
- CHAPTER SIX Legal Status and Migrant Economic Performance: The Case of Bulgarians in Spain and Greece
- CHAPTER SEVEN Bulgaria's Path to EU Membership – and Beyond
- CHAPTER EIGHT Accession into the Euro-Atlantic Institutions: Effects on Bulgaria's Balkan Policy(-ies)
- CHAPTER NINE Mirroring Gazes: Europe, Nationalism and Change in the Field of Bulgarian Art and Culture
- CHAPTER TEN The Emergence of Regional Policy in Bulgaria and the Role of the EU
- EPILOGUE
- Appendix I Tables, Figures and Maps
- Notes
- List of Contributors
CHAPTER ONE - Institution-Building, Political Culture and Identity in Bulgaria: The Challenge of ‘Europeanization’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreciations
- INTRODUCTION: The Europeanization of Bulgarian Society: A Long-Lasting Political Project
- CHAPTER ONE Institution-Building, Political Culture and Identity in Bulgaria: The Challenge of ‘Europeanization’
- CHAPTER TWO Appropriations of Bulgarian Literature in the West: From Pencho Slaveikov to Iordan Iovkov
- CHAPTER THREE Communism and Cold War in Bulgaria: The Absence of Europe?
- CHAPTER FOUR Bulgarian Turks During the Transition Period
- CHAPTER FIVE Women's Identity and Social Policy in Bulgaria Before and After 1989
- CHAPTER SIX Legal Status and Migrant Economic Performance: The Case of Bulgarians in Spain and Greece
- CHAPTER SEVEN Bulgaria's Path to EU Membership – and Beyond
- CHAPTER EIGHT Accession into the Euro-Atlantic Institutions: Effects on Bulgaria's Balkan Policy(-ies)
- CHAPTER NINE Mirroring Gazes: Europe, Nationalism and Change in the Field of Bulgarian Art and Culture
- CHAPTER TEN The Emergence of Regional Policy in Bulgaria and the Role of the EU
- EPILOGUE
- Appendix I Tables, Figures and Maps
- Notes
- List of Contributors
Summary
Introduction
In times of ‘cultural studies’ as a leading paradigm in historiography, a paper on institution building seems to be utterly outdated. Looking at institution building seems to belong to the suspicious tradition of ‘modernization theories’ in which institutions and their functional role were taken as crucial for any process of social change. The topic sounds like being part of the famous macrohistorical ‘master narratives’ of the past decades, focussing on ‘big structures’, but ignoring individuals and their experience, which for good reason have lost much of their attractiveness. In the opposite view, ‘Europeanization’ today is usually discussed in terms of identities, symbolic orders and cultural perceptions, but not in terms of structures or institutions. The newly risen interest in institutions that for a certain amount of time came up with the end of communism, in the meantime again has declined; even scholars, who in former times had little sense for culture in the explanation of social change, today have discovered culture as a crucial, if not as the decisive factor for ‘failed’ or ‘successful’ transformations. ‘Culture matters’, as S. Huntington and L. Harrison have claimed in a book discussing the preconditions of economic and social change. Francis Fukuyama has figured out that the cultural good of ‘trust’ is a major criterion for successful economic development, not formal institutions, and David Landes has explained world wide economic inequalities in terms of cultural preconditions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Bulgaria and EuropeShifting Identities, pp. 23 - 32Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010