scholarly journals Orthodox culture and collective identity in the ottoman balkans during the eighteenth century

1997 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Ottoman Balkans

<p>Τό ζήτημα τής συλλογικής ταυτότητας στήν ’Οθωμανική Βαλκανική καί ή<br />συμβολή τής ’Ορθόδοξης εκκλησιαστικής παράδοσης στή διάπλαση τού<br />αύτοπροσδιορισμοΰ τών πληθυσμών τής περιοχής κατά τον δέκατο όγδοο<br />αιώνα εξετάζονται σέ πολλαπλά επίπεδα. ’Αρχικά σκιαγραφειται ή εικόνα<br />όπως αναδύεται από τις πηγές, μέ άφετηρία απόπειρες νά άναπαραστηθεΐ<br />γραφικά ή εθνολογία τής περιοχής σέ γλωσσικούς χάρτες τής Εύρώπης. Πε-<br />ριγράφεται εν συνεχεία τό φαινόμενο τών επάλληλων διασπορών ώς συνεκτικός<br />παράγοντας πού ενοποιούσε τή Βαλκανική κοινωνία πριν τή διάσπασή<br />της από τά εθνικά κράτη. Εξετάζεται επίσης ό ρόλος τής ’Ορθόδοξης<br />Εκκλησίας, τού συστήματος τής άνώτερης παιδείας καί τού εμπορίου<br />ώς οί δυναμικοί συντελεστές πού διαμόρφωναν τήν ενιαία κοινότητα τών<br />λαών τής περιοχής καί σημειώνεται ή ρευστότητα καί συνεχής μεταλλαγή<br />τών γλωσσικών ταυτοτήτων, Έπισημαίνεται ότι άποτέλεσμα τής έπενέρ-<br />γειας τών τριών αύτών συντελεστών ύπήρξε ή εύρύτατη διάδοση καί καθιέρωση<br />τής ελληνικής γλώσσας ώς οργάνου τής επικοινωνίας στή Νοτιοανατολική<br />Ευρώπη πριν τό 1821. Τονίζεται ότι πολλές άπό τις πολιτισμικές<br />εκδηλώσεις πού είχαν ώς όργανο τήν ελληνική γλώσσα δέν πρέπει νά έρμη-</p><p>γεύονται ώς εθνικά καθορισμένα φαινόμενα καί μέ το ίδιο πνεύμα άνα-<br />σκευάζεται ό ιστοριογραφικός αναχρονισμός ότι δήθεν ή Εκκλησία τής<br />Κωνσταντινουπόλεως κατά την εποχή αυτή δοκίμασε να «έξελληνίσει» τούς<br />αλλόγλωσσους ’Ορθόδοξους πληθυσμούς τής Βαλκανικής.<br />Οί γενικότερες ερμηνευτικές θέσεις τής μελέτης εικονογραφούνται μέ<br />συγκεκριμένα παραδείγματα, πού άναδεικνύουν τή ρευστότητα των ταυτοτήτων<br />στήν προεθνική κοινωνία. Τα παραδείγματα περιλαμβάνουν τις περιπτώσεις<br />τού Θεοδώρου Καβαλλιώτη, τού Ναούμ Ramniceanu καί τού Διονυσίου<br />Φωτεινού, πού εμφανίζονται ώς εκπρόσωποι μιας κοινωνικής καί<br />πολιτισμικής πραγματικότητας, τήν όποια σάρωσε από τό προσκήνιο τής<br />Ιστορίας ή Ισχύς των εθνικισμών.</p>

scholarly journals The Rejection of Constitutional Incrementalism in Nepal's Federalisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-540
Author(s):  
Mara Malagodi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Institutional Choices ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Constitution Making

The relationship between federalism and identity was the single most contentious issue in the drafting of Nepal's 2015 Constitution, and remains an embattled feature of the country's post-conflict constitutional settlement. This article explains why ‘constitutional incrementalism'—the innovative constitution-making strategy for deeply divided societies theorised by Hanna Lerner—was ultimately (and wisely) rejected in Nepal's federalisation process. Historically a unitary state since its creation in the late eighteenth century, Nepal committed itself to federal restructuring in 2007, but profound disagreements endured over the set of institutional choices concerning the features of Nepal's federal arrangements throughout the constitution-making process (2008–15). Constitutional incrementalism with its emphasis on deferral, ambiguity and contradiction was thought of in some quarters as a pragmatic and instrumental way out of Nepal's political impasse. In the end, the 2015 Constitution expressly named the provinces (even if by just using numbers) and demarcated their boundaries already at the time of its promulgation. Any changes to this framework can only take place by way of constitutional amendment. This article explains why the incrementalist approach was rejected in Nepal's federalisation process, and reflects on the conditions under which constitutional incrementalism may succeed in societies that present profound disagreements over the collective identity of the polity.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN AMERICA: MYTHS AND REALITIES

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-478
Author(s):  
FRANCIS G. COUVARES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
American History ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
American Mind ◽  
Christian Conservatives

The Whiggish story of ever-evolving liberty issuing from the Revolutionary decades and progressing straightforwardly over the next two centuries is dead. But so too, it seems, on the evidence of these two good books, is the revisionist tale of either “republican virtue” (often trumpeted by progressives) or “evangelical piety” (often trumpeted by Christian conservatives) governing the American mind and its understanding of rights, obligations, and collective identity. Both Steven K. Green and David Sehat see the narrative arc of American history as a continual tension between the religious and secular understandings of the American Constitution. Sehat is more doubtful that the Jeffersonian–Madisonian doctrine of separation of church and state ever commanded broad assent. The “myth” that America was born religiously free, though peddled by liberals, he argues, actually disables secularists who are struggling to create a public realm truly free from religious coercion. Green more readily accepts the proposition that the germ of religious freedom grew from its eighteenth-century origins along a non-continuous but nonetheless clearly secularizing trajectory.

scholarly journals Tracing the origin of a new meaning of the term re‘āyā in the eighteenth-century ottoman Balkans

Balcanica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Fotic
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Ottoman Balkans

Besides its usage with the primary meanings: 1) social status; 2) subjectship, the term re??y? was used to denote, as many historians tend to claim, ?only non-Muslim subjects? from ?sometime? in the second half of the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. The paper demonstrates that this meaning of the term re??y? had already been in use since the first decades of the eighteenth century, and not to the exclusion of but along with other meanings. More frequent replacement of the neutral shari?a term zimm?(ler) and the usual official term kefere with the word re??y? should be considered a consequence of structural social change taking place in the same century.

A Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Age Of Revolution ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century places in sharp relief the contrast between inspiring ideas that heralded an auspicious future and immemorial traditions that cherished a vanishing past. Waxing large during that era was the European Enlightenment, with its projects for reform and optimistic forecasts about the prospect of making a better world. Heritage was reframed, as martyrs for the cause of religious liberty and heroes for the promotion of the arts and sciences were enshrined in a new pantheon. They served as icons marking a pathway toward a presumed destiny, amid high hopes that reason would triumph over superstition to guide the course of human affairs. Such sentiments gave reformers a new sense of collective identity as an imagined community acting in the name of progress. Against this backdrop, this volume addresses a variety of themes in memory’s multi-faceted domain, among them mnemonic schemes in the transition from theist to scientific cosmologies; memory remodeled in the making of print culture; memory’s newfound resources for introspection; politics reimagined for the modern age; the nature of tradition reconceived; the aesthetics of nostalgia for an aristocracy clinging to a tenuous identity; the lure of far-away places; trauma in an age of revolution; and the emerging divide between history and collective memory. Along the way, contributors address such topics as the idea of nation in early modern politics; the aesthetic vision of Hubert Robert in his garden landscapes; the transforming effects of the interaction between mind and its mnemonic satellites in print media; Shakespeare remembered and commemorated; the role of memory in the redesign of historiography; the mediation of high and popular culture through literature; soul-searching in female autobiography; and commemorative practices during the French Revolution.

Muslim Culture and Reform in 18th Century South Asia

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamal Malik
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Building Process ◽  
The World

AbstractUsually the European perception of South Asia and, related to it, academic research into this region, is informed by specific, powerful images and metaphors that establish a dichotomisation of the world. The reasons for this development cannot be analysed in detail here. Suffice it to say, however, that this organisation and designation of the world has deep roots. Until the Reformation, Europe was basically perceived only in terms of geographical boundaries. But the dichotomy between “Europe” and “Asia” acquired a new dimension in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when, in the wake of a change of paradigm into modernity, European self-consciousness gradually developed into a sense of European intellectual superiority. Just as a new form of collective identity had developed within the boundaries of Europe, based on the idea of “nation” in the late eighteenth century, and just as the members of the early nation-states forcibly dissociated themselves by definition from members of other societies in order to be able to establish their own identity, now, with the same intention, though on a different level, Europeans dissociated themselves from “Asia”, the “Orient” and “Islam”. The political recollection of important master narratives kept the mythical fictions in mind and imbued the nation-building process with enormous real power. This development towards a modern European identity was based, as can be deduced from many travellers' testimonies, on the history of reception, reciprocal perceptions, and the development of enemy images. In this process, the Orient and the Orientals were also used by Europeans as a didactic background for the critique of their own (European) urban societies. The literary technique of contextual alienation and distancing, such as can be found in Montesquieu's “Persian Letters”, was born in this period. These and following processes of projection were connected among others things with the fact that Europeans, as colonial masters, advanced to confront the world outside Europe. There they were faced with attitudes and norms that forced them to question their own perceptions. In doing so, they also tended to accept some of these strange and different ideas, and, thus, exposed themselves to cultural hybridisation which could then only be overcome by the reconstructing of their own culture as something “pure”, in contrast to the “degenerate” culture of the colonialised. In this way, collective antagonisms developed. Even the Oriental crusades that had been critically evaluated by European academicians, were now for the first time perceived in terms of cultural clash. Analogously, Europe and Asia were constructed in the eighteenth century and very predominantly in the nineteenth century in terms of arenas of power politics. For instance, it was during this time that the eastern borders of Europe were conceptualised, with the Balkans and Transoxania being considered as buffers or gaps between the two.

scholarly journals Rózsa Ignácz’s Torockói gyász [‘Torockó Mourning’]: Identity Beyond the Borders of Time and Space

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Zoltán Abádi-Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Erving Goffman ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Narrative Techniques

Rózsa Ignácz’s historical novel Torockói gyász [‘Torockó Mourning’] (1958) deals with the staggering tragedy of Transylvanian Torockó in 1702. But the referential pattern that emerges from the dramatic plot clearly points beyond eighteenth-century time and space in partly overt and mostly covert ways: to the early twentieth-century post-Trianon fate of the Hungarians in Transylvania, and beyond, to the destructive post-1945 totalitarian communist regime in Hungary, as well as to the backlash of the 1956 anticommunist and anti-Soviet revolution and war of independence. The narrative techniques of expanding early eighteenth-century time and space will be examined through the ways in which thematic threads of collective identity are woven in the novel in general, and the customs, habits, and the religious affiliation of the community are handled in particular. Theories of Jan Assmann, Michael Bamberg, David Herman, Erving Goffman, Fritz Heider and Anselm L. Strauss as well as observations of Ignácz researchers such as Lajos Kántor, Gabriella F. Komáromi, and Erzsébet Dani will be used.

scholarly journals Madhesis’ Consciousness of Geopolitics of the Tarai: A Resource for the Collective Identity Assertion

Patan Pragya ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-159
Author(s):  
Nirodh Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
National Unification ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the broader political and economic historical contexts within which the centralTarai was incorporated into the Nepali state since the so called national unification in the second half of the eighteenth century and subsequently how the relationship between the successive rulers and the Madhesi people has been remaining confrontational. Based on the data drawn from the historiography of Nepal vis-à-vis the central Tarai and the perceptions and experiences of Madhesi people regarding their identity issues, it is argued that historically evolving geopolitics of the centralTarai and the contingent Madhesis’ self-consciousness have provided the cause and context for organizing and mobilizing them for the assertion of distinct collective identity. The strategic geopolitical location and significant cultural distinction and economic strength of the central Tarai provided Madhesi people a leverage in the struggle for the recognition of their distinct identity.

The Kelmendi

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-37
Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Self Defence

The clan or tribe (‘fis’) system was fundamental to life in the northern Albanian highlands (Malësi e Madhe), and the Kelmendi were the most important of all the clans. This essay traces the story of their origin and development, and explains how and why they acquired their special pre-eminence over a much larger group of clans. Like the others, they began in the fifteenth century as a grouping, for self-defence purposes, around one prominent family. Unlike the others, they were given a special role by the Ottomans: derbend status, which meant that they functioned as armed guards of mountain passes and roads over a large area. This gave them a stronger collective identity, the privilege of bearing arms and the ability to extend their influence over other clans. The Kelmendi were active in many seventeenth-century revolts, and in the early eighteenth century the Ottomans tried to control them by means of a policy of mass deportation. Nevertheless they remained a dominant presence in the area until the early twentieth century.

The Making of a Bourgeois Identity? Urban Histories and their Historians in Eighteenth-Century France*

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarisse Coulomb
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Local History ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Revolution

Some historians claim that there was no middle-class consciousness in prerevolutionary France. Nevertheless, it was during the eighteenth century that the genre of municipal history reached its apogee with the publication of around one hundred studies. The pretension of the nobility to embody national freedoms, the debates about commerce and luxury and about patriotism led to the formation of a bourgeois consciousness and collective identity founded on historical arguments: the ideal of the bourgeoisie as a liberating force against the despotism of nobility was already in place before the Revolution. Local history was a political schooling which could explain the demands of community assemblies, in 1788, in favour of doubling the Third Estate's representation within the Estates General.

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