An Alternative Reading List on the Balkans & Yugoslavia

As I regularly blog and tweet about the Balkans (aside from writing about the region in a scholarly fashion), I often field questions about the literature and perspectives that have shaped my own views on the space, its histories and its peoples. I thought then that this personal blog might be an appropriate place to begin compiling this information in a slightly more systematic fashion.  

Some examples of what I have in mind already exist, of course. However, as far as I know, anything akin to comprehensive survey of critical scholarship on (the former) Yugoslavia does not exist. Since such a project could not possibly be complied by any one person, least of all a junior scholar, and since “critical” scholarship will mean different things to different people, I earnestly invite my colleagues to contribute their own suggestions. In the meantime, I will begin fleshing out ways to divide this list, by themes and regions, as necessary, and also to include texts of a theoretical nature that I have found indispensable to my own studies. The latter of these will follow at the end of the first "regional" list. Finally, I'll aim to include worthwhile online platforms for ongoing coverage of current events.  

If we find that the list grows, I would be happy to create a dedicated space for it on the main page of this site, rather than a mere blog post.

Finally, at no point should this list be taken as exhaustive, of debates, ideas or the contributions of individual authors, or indicative of anything other than my own personal sympathies and leanings. Though, of course, I hasten to add that I do not necessarily agree with the argument(s) of every text on this list in their entirety either. This perhaps somewhat eclectic collection is merely an introduction, I hope, into thinking about the Balkans and Yugoslavia, differently.  

The Balkans & Yugoslavia

Andreas, P. (2008). Blue Helmets, Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.

Anscombe, F. F. (2012). The Balkan Revolutionary Age. The Journal of Modern History, 572-606.

Anzulović, B. (1999). Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide. New York and London: New York University Press.

Arsenijević, D. (2007). Against Opportunistic Criticism. eipcp: institut européen pour des politiques culturelles en devenir: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0208/arsenijevic/en

Arsenijević, D. (2010). Forgotten Future: The Politics of Poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Bakunin, M. (1848). Appeal to the Slavs. Marxist Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1848/pan-slavism.htm

Bakunin, M. (1873). Statism and Anarchy. Marxist Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm

Banac, I. (1988). The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics. London & Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Barkey, K. (1994). Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Biserko, S. (2011, October (Volume 6, No. 4). Perceptions of Serbia’s Elite in Relation to the Dayton Agreement. Spirit of Bosnia: An International, Interdisciplinary, Bilingual Online Journal: http://www.spiritofbosnia.org/current-issue/perceptions-of-serbia%E2%80%99s-elite-in-relation-to-the-dayton-agreement/

Biserko, S. (2012). Yugoslavia's Implosion: The Fatal Attraction of Serbian Nationalism. Belgrade: The Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

Campbell, D. (1998 ). National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Campbell, D. (1999). Apartheid cartography: the Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of International Diplomacy in Bosnia. Political Geography, 395-435.

Chandler, D. (2000). Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton. London: Pluto Press.

Chandler, D. (2001). Bosnia: The Democracy Paradox. Current History , 100(644), 114-119.

Chandler, D. (2006). Peace without Politics? Ten Years of International State-Building in Bosnia. New York: Routledge.

Cohen, P. J. (1999). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.

Djokić, D. (2003). Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918-1992. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Djokić, D. (2007). Elusive Compromise: A History of Interwar Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press.

Donia, R. (2007, November 9). The Proximate Colony: Bosnia-Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian Rule. Kakanien Revisted: http://www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/RDonia1.pdf

Donia, R. J. (2006). Sarajevo: A Biography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Donia, R. J., & Fine Jr., J. V. (1994). Bosnia & Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gagnon, V. (2004). The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.

Glaurdić, J. (2011). The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. New Haven & London : Yale University Press.

Glenny, M. (2011). The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. New York: Penguin Books.

Grubačić, A. (2011). Don't Mourn: Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia. Oakland: PM Press.

Hassiotis, L. (2011). The Ideal of Balkan Unity from a European Perspective (1789–1945). Balcanica, 209-229.

Hoare, M. A. (2004). How Bosnia Armed. London: Saqi Books.

Hoare, M. A. (2007). The History of Bosnia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. London: Saqi Books.

Hromadzic, A. (2011). Bathroom Mixing: Youth Negotiate Democracy in Postconflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 34(2), 268-289.

Kitromilides, P. M. (1989). 'Imagined Communities' and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans. European History Quarterly, 19, 149-194.

Lampe, J. R., & Jackson, M. R. (1982). Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950: From Imperial Borderlands to Developing Nations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lovrenović, I. (2001). Bosnia: A Cultural History. New York : New York University Press.

Magaš, B. (2003). On Bosnianess. Nations and Nationalism, 19-23.

Malcolm, N. (1994). Bosnia: A Short History. London: Macmillian London Limited.

Mazower, M. (2002). The Balkans: A Short History . New York: Modern Library.

Mazower, M. (2002). Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century . The American Historical Review, 1158-1178.

Meckfessel, S. (2009). Suffled How it Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans. Oakland: AK Press.

Milojković-Djurić, J. (2000). Benjamin von Kállay’s Role in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1882–1903: Habsburg’s Policies in an Occupied Territory. Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, 211-220.

Mišina, D. (2010). “Spit and Sing, My Yugoslavia”: New Partisans, social critique and Bosnian poetics of the patriotic. Nationalities Papers, 265-289.

Morton, T. (2006, February ). Manufacturing ancient hatreds. Griffith Review: http://griffithreview.com/edition-7-the-lure-of-fundamentalism/manufacturing-ancient-hatreds

Mueller, J. (2000). The Banality of "Ethnic War". International Security , 25(1), 42-70.

Mujkić, A. (2007). We, the Citizens of Ethnopolis . Constellations, 112-128.

Mujkić, A. (2008). We, the Citizens of Ethnopolis . Sarajevo: Centar za ljudska prava Univerziteta u Sarajevu.
 
Nixon, R. (1993). Of Balkans and Bantustans. Transitions, 60, 4-26. 

Ramet, S. P. (2005). Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambirdge : Cambridge University Press.

Roudometof, V. (2001). Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origins of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Schwartz, S. (1999). Beyond "Ancient Hatreds". Policy Review.

Sells, M. A. (1998). The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia. Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press.

Silber, L., & Little, A. (1996). Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation . New York: Penguin Books .

Simms, B. (2002). Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia. New York: Penguin Books.

Spaskovska, L. (2011). Stairway to Hell: The Yugoslav Rock Scene and Youth during the Crisis Decade of 1981–1991. East Central Europe, 355-372.

Stavrianos, L. S. (1942). Balkan Federation: A History of the Movement Toward Balkan Unity in Modern Times. Northampton, Massachusetts: Department of History of Smith College.

Toal, G., & Dhalman, C. T. (2011). Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and its Reversal. New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Todorova, M. (2009). Imagining the Balkans: Updated Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Udovički, J., & Ridgeway, J. (2000). Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press.

Vodovnik, Ž. (2013). Democracy as a Verb: New Mediations on the Yugoslav Praxis Philosophy. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 14(4), 433-452.

Wilmer, F. (2002). The Social Construction of Man, the State and War: Identity, Conflict, and Violence in Former Yugoslavia. New York: Routledge.

Woodward, S.L. (1995). Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington: The Brookings Institution.  

Zahra, T. (2010). Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis. Slavic Review, 93-119.

Theoretical & Thematic Texts

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Spread and Origin of Nationalism . London; New York: Verso.

Anderson, P. (1974). Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: NLB.

Antonio, R. J. (2000). After Postmodernism: Reactionary Tribalism. American Journal of Sociology, 40-87.

Bakunin, M. (1873). Statism and Anarchy. Marxist Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm

Clastres, P. (1989). Societies Against the State. New York: Zone Books.

Day, R. J. (2005). Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements. Toronto: Pluto Press & Between the Lines Books.

Ferguson, J. (1994). The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, And Bureaucratic Power In Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Graeber, D. (2004). Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Graeber, D. (2013). The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement. New York: Spiegel & Grau. 

Kropotkin, P. (1897). The State: Its Historic Role. Panarchy: http://www.panarchy.org/kropotkin/1897.state.html

Manin, B. (1997). The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oppenheimer, F. (2007). The State. Montreal: Black Rose Books .

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (2012). Two Cheers for Anarchism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Volkov, V. (2002). Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Wolin, S. (1985). Postmodern Politics and the Absence of Myth. Social Research, 217-239.

Wolin, S. (1994). Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy. In J. P. Euben, J. Wallach, & J. Ober, Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy  (pp. 29-58). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Wolin, S. (1996). Fugitive Democracy. In S. Benhabib, Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political  (pp. 31-45). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wolin, S. (2008). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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