Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T19:28:29.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phantom Borders in Eastern Europe: A New Concept for Regional Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2019

Béatrice von Hirschhausen ,
Hannes Grandits ,
Claudia Kraft ,
Dietmar Müller  and
Thomas Serrier
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper is programmatic: it defines the concept of “phantom borders” and describes its heuristic potential. The proposed approach positions itself between structuralist methodologies that postulate stable social and cultural regional structures and deconstructive viewpoints that reject the former, while focusing on the discursive dimension of regions. The paper takes this tension as its point of departure. Viewed from a situational perspective, phantom borders are neither to be understood as immutable structures nor as purely discursive constructions, but rather as an outcome of the interaction between three interwoven levels, which are simultaneously: 1) imagined in mental maps and discourses, 2) experienced and perceived by the respective actors, and 3) shaped by everyday practices and continuously updated and implemented. Phantom borders are context sensitive. We argue that the topic of phantom borders is not only relevant for research on eastern Europe, but also for research in “new area studies” in general.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , Summer 2019 , pp. 368 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank the editor, Harriet L. Murav, for in-depth suggestions and the efficient handling of the manuscript, and the anonymous referees for very constructive and valuable suggestions; the usual disclaimer applies.

References

1. Finke, Peter, “Misteln, Wälder und Frösche: Über Metaphern in der Wissenschaft,” Metaphorik.de, no. 4 (2003): 45-65Google Scholar, 55, at https://www.metaphorik.de/sites/www.metaphorik.de/files/journal-pdf/04_2003_finke.pdf (accessed April 11, 2019).

2. In addition to the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, the Chair of South-East European History at Humboldt-University in Berlin, the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin, and the Chair of East European History at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, several other research institutions have participated in the project in Germany (European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder, Siegen University, Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe Leipzig (GWZO), Freie Universität Berlin, Center for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin); in central and southeastern Europe (Silesian Institute in Opole, University of Zagreb, University of Iaşi); and in other European countries (CERCEC/Paris, CETOBAC/Paris, University of Basel, Switzerland).

3. In the meantime, the members of the research network have published first results in the series “Phantomgrenzen im östlichen Europa”; see in particular von Hirschhausen, Béatrice, Grandits, Hannes, Kraft, Claudia, Müller, Dietmar, and Serrier, Thomas, Phantomgrenzen—Räume und Akteure in der Zeit neu denken (Göttingen, 2015)Google Scholar; Aldenhoff-Hübinger, Rita, Gousseff, Catherine and Serrier, Thomas, eds., Europa vertikal. Zur Ost-West-Gliederung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2016)Google Scholar; Esch, Michael G. and Hirschhausen, Béatrice von, eds., Wahrnehmen, Erfahren, Gestalten: Phantomgrenzen und soziale Raumproduktion (Göttingen, 2017)Google Scholar. See also several articles translated into English as part of the thematic issue edited by Hirschhausen, Béatrice von, “Phantom Borders,” in L’Espace géographique 46, no. 2 (2017): 97–173Google Scholar, at https://www.cairn-int.info/list_articles_fulltext.php?ID_REVUE=E_EG (accessed May 3, 2019).

4. For an analysis of the election results in Poland, see the article by Tomasz Zarycki, “The Electoral Geography of Poland: Between Stable Spatial Structures and Their Changing Interpretations,” Erdkunde: Archive for Scientific Geography 69, no. 2 (2015): 107–24.

5. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Syan Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York, 1972–73).

6. Fernand Braudel, Les ambitions de l‘histoire, eds. Roselyne De Ayala and Paule Braudel (Paris, 1997), 58.

7. Fernand Braudel, “Histoire et Sciences Sociales: La longue durée,” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 13, no. 4 (1958): 725–53.

8. Matthias Middell, “Der Spatial Turn und das Interesse an der Globalisierung in der Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Jörg Döring and Tristan Thielman, eds., Spatial Turn. Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften (Bielefeld, 2008): 103–24.

9. Jenő Szücs, Die drei historischen Regionen Europas, introduction by Fernand Braudel (Frankfurt/Main, 1990); Oskar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History (London, 1950).

10. See Braudel, Les ambitions de l’histoire, 84–86.

11. Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993).

12. See Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work, 133.

13. For a critique of Robert Putnam, see Margaret Levi, “Social and Unsocial Capital: A Review Essay of Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work,” Politics & Society 24, no. 1 (1996): 45–55; Sidney Tarrow, “Making Social Science Work Across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection on Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work,” The American Political Science Review 90, no. 2 (Jun 1996): 389–97; Hervé Rayner, “Le point de vue aérien de Robert Putnam. À propos de Making Democracy Work,” Politix: Revue des sciences sociales du politique 11, no. 42 (1998): 179–204.

14. Alf Lüdtke, Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen (Frankfurt/Main, 1989); Winfried Schulze, ed., Sozialgeschichte, Alltagsgeschichte, Mikro-Historie: Eine Diskussion (Göttingen, 1994).

15. Carlo Ginzburg, “Microstoria: Due o tre cose che so di lei,” Quaderni Storici 29, no. 86 (2) (August 1994): 511–39; Jacques Revel, Jeux d’échelles. La micro-analyse à l’expérience (Paris, 1996).

16. Collectif, “Histoire et sciences sociales. Un tournant critique?,” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 43, no. 2 (1988): 291–93; Bernard Lepetit, ed., Les formes de l’expérience: Une autre histoire sociale (Paris, 1995); Bernard Lepetit, “L’histoire prend-t-elle les acteurs au sérieux?,” EspaceTemps 59-61 (1995): 112–22.

17. Pier Paolo Viazzo and Katherine A. Lynch, “Anthropology, Family History, and the Concept of Strategy,” International Review of Social History 47, no. 3 (December 2002): 423–52; Theo Engelen  and Arthur P. Wolf, eds., Marriage and the Family in Eurasia: Perspectives on the Hajnal Hypothesis (Amsterdam, 2005); Sebastian Klüsener, Mikołaj Szoltysek,  and Joshua R. Goldstein, “Towards an Integrated Understanding of Demographic Change and its Spatio-Temporal Dimensions: Concepts, Data Needs, and Case Studies,” Die Erde: Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 143, no. 1-2 (January 2012): 75–104.

18. Etienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg 1648–1806 (Sigmaringen, 1991); John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley (New York, 1974); Christophe Duhamelle, La frontière au village: Une identité catholique allemande au temps des Lumières (Paris, 2010); Christophe Duhamelle, “Raum, Grenzerfahrung und konfessionelle Identität im Heiligen Römischen Reich im Barockzeitalter,” in Karin Friedrich, ed., Die Erschließung des Raumes: Konstruktion, Imagination und Darstellung von Räumen und Grenzen im Barockzeitalter (Wiesbaden, 2014): 23–45.

19. For approaches that focus on the historical impact of locality or regionality, see for instance Philipp Ther and Holm Sundhaussen, eds., Regionale Bewegungen und Regionalismen in europäischen Zwischenräumen seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Marburg, 2003); Beth Mitchneck, “Geography Matters: Discerning the Importance of Local Context,” Slavic Review 63, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 491–516; Christophe Duhamelle, Andreas Kossert and Bernhard Struck, eds., Grenzregionen. Ein europäischer Vergleich vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/Main, 2007); Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018). Cities have also attracted the attention of researchers as sites of historical agency: Felix Ackermann, Palimpsest Grodno. Nationalisierung, Nivellierung und Sowjetisierung einer mitteleuropäischen Stadt, 1919–1991 (Wiesbaden, 2010); Gregor Thum, Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław during the Century of Expulsions (Princeton, 2011); and Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L΄viv, 1914—1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, 2016).

20. Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002): Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, Mass., 2006): Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, eds., Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (Budapest, 2007): Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, 2008).

21. Steven Seegel, Mapping Europe’s Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire (Chicago, 2012); Friederike Kind-Kovács, Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (Budapest, 2014); Alexander Badenoch, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke, eds., Airy Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War (Baden-Baden, 2013); Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Russlands Fahrt in die Moderne: Mobilität und sozialer Raum im Eisenbahnzeitalter (Stuttgart, 2014).

22. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994); Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997); Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: The “East” in European Identity Formation (Manchester, 1999); see also Karl Kaser, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, Robert Pichler, Christian Promitzer, and Elisabeth Vogel, eds., Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf, vol. 11 of Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens (Klagenfurt, 2003); Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Euro-Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880,” The Journal of Modern History 77, no. 3 (September 2005): 591–628; Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler and, and  Steffen Schröter, eds., Das Prinzip “Osten”: Geschichte und Gegenwart eines symbolischen Raums (Bielefeld, 2010).

23. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000), 29.

24. Ibid., 32.

25. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; Holm Sundhaussen, “Europa balcanica. Der Balkan als historischer Raum Europas,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1999): 626–53; Maria Todorova, “Der Balkan als Analysekategorie: Grenzen, Raum, Zeit,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28, no. 3 (Jul.-Sep. 2002): 470–92; Holm Sundhaussen, “Der Balkan: Ein Plädoyer für Differenz,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 29, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2003): 608–24.

26. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1994).

27. Ibid., 39.

28. Ibid., 38.

29. Ibid., 34.

30. Ibid., 33.

31. Ibid., 38.

32. Derek Gregory, Geographical Imaginations (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).

33. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1978), 55.

34. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; Todorova, Balkan als Analysekategorie.

35. Antje Schlottmann, RaumSprache: Ost-West-Differenzen in der Berichterstattung zur deutschen Einheit: Eine sozialgeographische Theorie (Stuttgart, 2005).

36. Hans Dietrich Schultz, “‘Natürliche Grenzenals politisches Programm,” in Claudia Honegger, Stefan Hradil and Franz Traxler, eds., Grenzenlose Gesellschaft? (Wiesbaden, 1999), 328–43.

37. Marie-Claire Lavabre, Le fil rouge: Sociologie de la mémoire communiste (Paris, 1994), 31.

38. On the different discourses and their emotionalization, see e.g. Maruška Svašek, Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe (New York, 2006).

39. Wolfgang Aschauer, “Ceci n’est pas la Hongrie—Grenzen in Realität und Imagination am Beispiel Ungarns,” (paper presented at the symposium of the scientific committee of the Southeast Europe Association on the topic “Südosteuropa und die alten/neuen Grenzen. Ein analytischer Blick zurück im Jahr 25 nach der Wende,” Berlin, February 28, 2014).

40. Gil Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis, 2003).

41. Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York, 2004), 259.

42. Paul Shoup, Communism and the Yugoslav National Question (New York, 1968); Irena Stefoska, “Nation, Education and Historiographic Narratives: The Case of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (1944–1990),” in Ulf Brunnbauer and Hannes Grandits, eds., The Ambiguous Nation: Case Studies from Southeastern Europe in the 20th Century (Munich, 2013), 195–229.

43. Keith S. Brown, “Political Realities and Cultural Specificities in Contemporary Macedonian Jokes,” Western Folklore 54, no. 3 (1995): 197–212; Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton, 1995); Jane Cowan, Macedonia: The Politics of Identity and Difference (London, 2000); Žarko Trajanoski, “‘National’ Flags in the Republic of Macedonia,” in Brunnbauer and Grandits, eds., Ambiguous Nation, 449–77.

44. Robert Pichler, “Makedonische Albaner im Spannungsfeld von Nationsbildung und islamischer Erneuerung,” in Christian Voß and Jordanka Telbizova-Sack, eds., Islam und Muslime in (Südost)Europa im Kontext von Transformation und EU-Erweiterung (Munich, 2010), 195–222.

45. Martina Löw, Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), 224.

46. Martina Löw’s relational conception of space builds on the dualistic conception of structure in Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, Eng., 1984). A similar concept is also found in French geography, see Augustin Berque, “Paysage-empreinte, paysage-matrice: éléments de problématique pour une géographie culturelle,” Espace géographique 13, no. 1 (1984): 33–34; and Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 37.

47. Dietmar Müller, “Eigentum verwalten in Rumänien. Advokaten, Geodäten und Notare (1830–1940),” in Dietmar Müller and Hannes Siegrist, eds., Professionen, Eigentum und Staat. Europäische Entwicklungen im Vergleich (19. und 20. Jahrhundert) (Göttingen, 2014), 75–132.

48. Katherine Verdery, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Ithaca, 2003).

49. Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Les nouvelles campagnes Roumaines: Paradoxes d’un »retour« paysan (Paris, 1997); Violette Rey, ed., Les nouvelles campagnes de l’Europe centre orientale (Paris, 1998).

50. Among the works on path dependency we may refer to Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” The American Political Science Review 94, no. 2 (Jun 2000): 251–67; Ian Greener, “The Potential of Path Dependence in Political Studies,” Politics 25, no. 1 (2005 ): 62–72; Keith Darden and Anna Grzymala-Busse, “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism, and the Communist Collapse,” World Politics 59, no. 1 (Oct. 2006): 83–115; Sascha O. Becker et al., “The Empire is Dead, Long Live the Empire! Long-Run Persistence of Trust and Corruption in the Bureaucracy,” The Economic Journal 126, no. 590 (February 2016): 40–74; Leonid Peisakhin, “Cultural Legacies: Persistence and Transmission,” in Norman Schofield and Gonzalo Caballero, eds., The Political Economy of Governance: Institutions, Political Performance and Elections (Cham, 2015), 21–39.

51. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, 2004), 79–102.

52. Pierson, 79.

53. Koselleck, Futures Past, 255–75.

54. On the origin of area studies in the context of the Cold War, see Szanton, David L., ed., The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines (Berkeley, 2004)Google Scholar; Engerman, David C., Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar. Recent research historicizes the close linkage between area studies and non-scientific interests as part of a scholarly history of the Cold War. See Solovey, Mark and Cravens, Hamilton, eds., Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature (New York, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erickson, Paul, Klein, Judy L., Daston, Lorraine, Lemov, Rebecca, Sturm, Thomas and Gordin, Michael D., How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (Chicago, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. See the essays in Zeit im Spiegel: Das Jahrhundert der Osteuropaforschung, special issue of Osteuropa 63, no. 2–3 (2013), esp. Stefan Troebst, “Sonderweg zur Geschichtsregion: Die Teildisziplin Osteuropäische Geschichte”: 55–80.

56. Baberowski, Jörg, “Das Ende der osteuropäischen Geschichte: Bemerkungen zur Lage einer geschichtswissenschaftlichen Disziplin,” in Creuzberger, Stefan et al. , eds., Wohin steuert die Osteuropaforschung: Eine Diskussion (Cologne, 2000), 42Google Scholar.

57. Mathias Niendorf, “Mehr als eine Addition von Nationalhistoriographien. Chancen der Osteuropäischen Geschichte als Regionalwissenschaft,” in Stefan Creuzberger et al., 101–6.

58. Stefan Troebst, “Ende oder Wende? Historische Osteuropaforschung in Deutschland: Vier Anmerkungen zu Jörg Baberowski,” in Stefan Creuzberger et al., 63.

59. This was the criticism that was already made in the early 1990s about east European Studies, see Stefan Creuzberger et al, “Osteuropaforschung im Umbruch: Motive, Hintergründe und Verlauf einer Fachdebatte in Deutschland,” in Stefan Creuzberger et al., 15.

60. Schäbler, Birgit, “Einleitung. Das Studium der Weltregionen (Area Studies) zwischen Fachdisziplinen und der Öffnung zum Globalen: Eine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Annäherung,” in Schäbler, Birgit, ed., Area Studies und die Welt: Weltregionen und die neue Globalgeschichte (Vienna, 2007), 11–44Google Scholar.