MACMILLAN Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans (Memory Politics and Transitional Justice)

This volume explores how the process of European integration has influenced collective memory in the countries of the Western Balkans. In the region, there is still no shared understanding of the causes (and consequences) of the Yugoslav wars. The conflicts of the 1990s but also of WWII and its aftermath have created “ethnically confined” memory cultures. As such, divergent interpretations of history continue to trigger confrontations between neighboring countries and hinder the creation of a joint EU perspective. In this volume, the authors examine how these “memory wars” impact the European dimension - by becoming a tool to either support or oppose Europeanisation. The contributors focus on how and why memory is renegotiated, exhibited, adjusted, or ignored in the Europeanisation process. Review “This volume is an important contribution to debates about Europeanization. Through well researched case studies, it shows how European memory politics are appropriated and incorporated into local and national memory discourses. The contributions show how Europeanization has become a performance and is not transformative when it comes to memory politics. The insights of the chapters and coherent framework shed light not just on the Western Balkans, but contribute to a critical understanding of Europeanization more broadly.” – Florian Bieber, Jean Monnet Chair in the Europeanization of Southeastern Europe, Professor of Southeast European History and Politics, University of Graz, Austria “Europeanisation and Memory Politics in the Western Balkans is an impressive book. By presenting a set of highly readable case studies, Milošević and Trošt demonstrate how crucial the study of memory politics is for a better understanding of European politics more generally. The focus is squarely on the countries of the former Yugoslavia, but the analysis, conclusions and ideas apply to a much larger area. The book also provides us with a complex understanding of Europeanization and shows how far-reaching the political effects can be of something as seemingly apolitical as ‘memories’. The Western Balkans form a rich field of study in their own right on this topic, but, as readers of this book will realize, they provide us also with a sharp lens through which we might see certain developments in the EU ― and even elsewhere in the world ― more clearly.” – Peter Vermeersch, Professor of Politics, Leuven International and European studies (LINES), KU Leuven, Belgium “This excellent and timely volume explores the processes and practices of Europeanisation on cultures of memory, sites of memory, and memory politics in South Eastern Europe. Through its interdisciplinary and innovative approach, the volume addresses truly transnational memory processes in the interplay between European institutions and memory entrepreneurs in new or prospective member states. Crucially, the chapters foreground the roles of local memory actors and elites in the promotion, actualization and sometimes appropriation of “Europeanized memories” in the region, aspects that had received insufficient attention in the existing literature. This is a stimulating read and an important contribution to the research fields of memory politics, Europeanisation, and contemporary South Eastern Europe alike.” – Tea Sindbaek, Associate Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark “This book stands out for combining two fields that previously have not been combined: literature on Europeanisation and literature on Memory Politics. Especially the latter is still in its infancy and Milošević’s and Trošt’s contribution adds an important dimension to a still underdeveloped research area. The combination of the two different sets of literature is innovative and allows the different authors of this edited volume to ask new questions that so far have not been addressed in a systematic way.” – Aline Sierp, co-foun