Vidmar Horvat Ksenija: Periferna Europa tranzitologija i postkrizni diskursi u jugoistočnoj Europi

Ksenija Vidmar Horvat: Peripheral Europe, transitology and post-crisis discourses in Southeast Europe

In the book Peripheral Europe, we deal with the EU crisis in the context of Europeanization and the specific position that Europeanization took after the end of the Cold War. The integration plan, which should connect the post-socialist East with the "old" part of the continent and connect the post-communist block on the periphery with the democratic core of the West, took place according to Western-centric, Euro-centric and post-colonial scenarios. These were not three separate phases of integration: their time frames overlapped, and occasionally they pushed each other out in antagonistic relationships, often eluding each other and returning in new discursive formations. The fundamental structure of relations that dominated the apparently disordered understanding of the post-communist East was roughly divided along two axes: first along the axis of difference, and then along the axis of kinship. Due to the dual nature of the relations that governed the integration processes, the entire management system of the European Union in the region can be called post-colonial, with the center implementing a policy of internal colonialism, and the periphery gradually assuming the role of an imperial border.

The book is about social changes in Europe after two world crises, financial (2007-2008) and refugee (2015-). The fundamental question addresses the topic of the social contract that is taking shape in the post-crisis state in the center and on the periphery of the EU, whereby the South-Eastern Europe of the post-crisis Mediterranean countries and the states of the "Balkan road" is defined as the peripheral region. From the perspective of the periphery, the analysis is concentrated on cultural discourses about emerging citizenship, on discourses about belonging and identity. Using the method of historical sociology and the theoretical apparatus of postcolonial studies, the role of the past and collective memories in articulating the new geographies of Europe is studied. Special attention is paid to intellectual discourses of change, public cultures of resistance and dissidence, and emerging perceptions of the Other.

Prof. Ph.D. Ksenija Vidmar Horvat (1966) is a cultural sociologist and comparatist. Since 2000, he has been teaching the compulsory course Sociology of Culture at the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana, and he also deals with media, gender issues and global culture. Her scientific research work is focused on the issues of cultural globalization, post-socialism, transcultural studies, cultural identities, minorities, memory, issues of post-national cosmopolitanism and Europeanization. She is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Cultural Studies and the expert group for the study of Roma culture at the European Union. She collected and edited classic texts in the field of film and television theory, is the co-editor of special editions of the Slovenian magazines Delta, Teorija i praksa and the Journal of Criticism of Science, and is the co-editor of the electronic edition of the Great General Sociological Lexicon. She is the author and editor of the following books: Women's Genres (2001), Introduction to the Sociology of Culture (2004), Global Culture (2006), The Future of Intercultural Dialogue in Europe: Perspectives (2008), Maps Between. Essays on European culture and identity after the end of the cold war (2009). Since 2009, she has been the head of the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy. From 2013 to 2016, she was a member of the Commission for Research and Development of the University of Ljubljana.