In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson stressed the role that literature, and particularly the development of the novel, actually played in building a nation as an “imagined community.” Others have emphasized how building a national literature has often gone hand in hand with the creation of a national identity (e.g. Thiesse; Jusdanis). All have underlined the strong relationship between nationalism and literature: literature is a concrete tool that builds the nation as a community; literature also serves to build and spread a national identity.

What role, if any, does kinship play in modern political life? Recent work in comparative politics has focused on a variety of informal relationships. It is striking that kinship has not received similar, sustained attention. The broad assumption of most theoretically-driven work is that kinship is the domain of the anthropologist; to the extent that political scientists consider kinship, they do so as something for modern institutions to overcome, as something in fundamental opposition to the state apparatus.

This paper explores the limits and possibilities for postethnic mobilization in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It employs and critically assesses Tarrow's classic concept of political opportunity structure for the explaining the variations in the occurrence of postethnic mobilization in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a deeply divided society. While the main cleavages in the country run along ethnic lines, a number of groups and NGOs attempt to mobilize alternative identities across ethnic boundaries. These groups are mostly based in the Federation entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and not in the Republika Srpska. My analysis shows that the concept of political opportunity structure only partly explains this difference. I thus suggest an alternative perspective, which takes into account the cultural environment in which the mobilization happens. The first part of the paper expands on the definition of postethnic activism, explaining what it is and how I proceeded in researching postethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The second part uses the framework of political opportunity structure for assessing the influence of environmental factors on the emergence and development of postethnic activism. The third part of the paper evaluates the relevance of the political opportunity structure framework, considers the merits of an approach which takes into account the cultural context, and suggests some further avenues for research.

In December 2009 I had the privilege of participating in an unique gathering of scholars at Ditchley Park, near Oxford sponsored by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter project. As is usual with such conclaves, the formal discussion of papers in panel sessions was useful, but the exchanges between sessions - over breakfast, or late into the night sitting in the common areas - were often far more revealing. Looking back on the conference as a whole, including both formal and informal discourse, I would like to make two broad assertions about the current state of the academic debate, which are well reflected in the papers published in this symposium. First, the Holocaust looms larger than ever as the great challenge for historians of Ukraine. Although the program of the conference was dedicated to the interwar period, the topic was unavoidable and was engaged directly in virtually every session. Arcane yet heated debate over, for example, specific anti-Semitic statements of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during the 1930s was only cut short when a participant reminded the group that the OUN was numerically insignificant at the time these statements were made - yet limited attention was paid to the far more mainstream Ukrainian political movements such as the Ukrainian National Democratic Organization (UNDO). The trajectory of academic focus was pulled into a distorted orbit around the Holocaust, and that gravitational pull is increasing as the field matures.

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

(T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets)

The early strains of Slovene music resound with the echoes of Illyrians and Celts, peoples who once travelled across present-day Slovene territory, now peopled by Slovenes who remained here as the most westernly settled branch of Slavs.

Along with her better known Czech neighbour, Slovakia is one of Europe's newest states. Born over the new year of 1993, it is the latest product of the unravelling of the post-communist order. A small nation—although at 5,269,000, it has a larger population than Norway, Denmark or Finland—Slovakia has yet to make a significant impact on European consciousness. This is illustrated by the repeated reply of a Slovak woman, living in London, to the question of the whereabouts of the strange land of her origin. Honolulu was the capital of this island she told Londoners in jest. To her amazement, rarely did anyone question her geography. When it comes to Britain, it would appear the sense of Slovakia can be aptly summarized by the infamous phrase with which interwar Czechoslovakia was dismissed by P.M. Neville Chamberlin—as a “faraway country of which we know nothing …” It still comes as a surprise, even to those who consider themselves familiar with the contours of contemporary Europe, that Bratislava, the new capital of this “faraway country's” eastern half (Slovakia), is only 60 kilometres from Vienna.

This study draws on ethnographic research conducted in a small village, Baltinava in Latvia, 2.5 kilometres from the border with Russia. The research examines how ethnic Russian women create a specific Latvian Russian identity by contrasting themselves from ethnic Latvians and Russians who live in Russia and identifying with both groups at the same time. To narrate their lives and to make them meaningful, real and/or perceived “attributes” are combined to draw boundaries between “us” and “them.” Thus, the same thing such as language can be used not only both to distinguish themselves from Russians in Russia or Latvians but also to form coherent identities and to emphasize similarities. This study suggests that ethnicities cannot be reduced to a list of set ethnic groups that are very often used in official government statistics. Ethnic identities have to be viewed as fluid and situational. Moreover, this study shows the dialectic nature of ethnicity. On the one hand, external political, historical and social processes create and recreate ethnic categories and definitions. Yet, on the other hand, the women in this study are active agents creating meaningful and symbolic ethnic boundaries.

Annexation into the Russian Empire transformed the cities of Central Asia. The European presence increased steadily from year to year and with it new city neighborhoods were created, often alongside the old quarters in which the autochthonous population lived. With increased immigration during the Soviet era, the majority of the population in the region's principal cities were either Slavs or Russified minorities and the common language used by all the inhabitants, including the autochthonous ones who continued to use their mother tongue, was Russian. The Soviets saw these changes as part of a process of modernization starting in the cities’ European neighborhoods which would spread progressively to the local population.