Beschreibung
It is the stated intention of this volume on Gender and Nation in South Eastern Europe to challenge
the image of an antagonistic “inside” and “outside”. The authors do not only argue from various
geographical points of view, from within and without the region, including Bulgaria, the Kosovo,
Serbia, Romania, Croatia, as well as Austria, Germany and the United States, they also argue from
different scientific points of view and scholarly traditions, be it in the vein of Donna Haraway’s
standpoint of epistemology, a multi-sited ethnography or in reference to dialogical models. They raise
their voices on sexist patriarchalism and thus on the relationship of gender and nation on which the
specific phenomenon of regional nationalisms is based.
The editors subscribe to an open definition of gender as a social and cultural localisation of
perceptions of sex. The perception of biological sex is thus not ignored here, on the contrary. Its social
and political role is particularly apparent when neo-liberal discourses of masculinity and femininity
make reference to a “natural” sex. The question of socio-cultural gender differences, the ideals on
which the categories “man” and “woman” are based and their forced or enabled embedding through a
regional historical or political environment are thus central. The fact that the understanding of
masculinity and femininity varies according to the respective local “reproductive regimes” is self-
evident.
In Part One, this volume is introduced in two contributions on the theoretical complex of gender and
nation. They provide a glance at this web of meanings over time and space and explain why this
relationship is so vital, why it inevitably leads to the inclusion of the male self and the exclusion of the
female other. Ideological constructions and structural relationships develop and change based on a
background of concrete historical events and in the course of specific social transformation processes.
The essays in Part Two then delve into a discussion of regional and historical forms and effects. They
demonstrate how the relationship has effected the consolidation and national self-definition processes
of the countries of South Eastern Europe and to what specific forms of inequality between social and
cultural groups this is leading or has led. Historically anchored, the inevitable relationship of gender
and nation leads not only to the subordination of women in all nation-states, at the same time it allows
nations to develop and survive on the basis of the inequality of the sexes.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Karl Kaser teaches history at the University of
Graz.
