Setting the framework

In the political and economic climate, balkanization seems to a global concern. However, to understand balkanization, there is a need to first frame the discourse of Balkanism. Balkanism unsettles what is perceived as solid. The Balkans has been described as a zone of transition and passing through, and “a bridge between stages of growth,” thus invoking labels such as “semideveloped, semicolonial, semicivilized, and semioriental.” The need to legitimize homogeneity through adoption of Western values was seen in the renaming of the Balkans as the Western Balkans in 1998. The imposition of balkanization for purposes of attaining stability emerged when the Balkans and its borders were reorganized during the 1878 Congress of Berlin. The part of the periphery that is analyzed is the one that has posed the most alternative way of deploying balkanization – the former Yugoslav context. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.