Books & Volumes
NEW VOLUME: Orthodox Christianity in 21st Century Greece: The Role of Religion in Culture, Ethicity and Politics, edited by Victor Roudometof (University of Cyprus) & Vasilios N. Makrides (University of Erfurt, Germany), Foreword by Grace Davie. London: Ashgate, 2010, 274 pages, Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7546-6696-7.
Brief description
This volume offers a comprehensive treatment of the role Orthodox Christianity plays in 21st century Greece from social scientific and cultural-historical perspectives. It breaks new ground by examining in depth the multifaceted changes that took place in the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and politics, ethnicity, gender, and popular culture. It consists of 11 chapters and it is divided into parts: One part is addressing the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and contemporary Modern Greek culture while another part is addressing the connections between Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and ethnicity and contemporary politics, on the other hand. Its objective is to allow scholars to gain a better knowledge of an Eastern Orthodox country that has never experienced communism – and hence to offer a point of comparison vis-à-vis the post-communist Orthodox societies of Eastern Europe. In this manner, scholars can differentiate the institutional and cultural characteristics of Eastern Orthodoxy from those features related to the post-communist legacy. Many of the volume's chapters were originally presented at the panels on Greek Orthodoxy, organized for the 2005 Congress of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR, Zagreb, Croatia).
For more information, visit the publisher's website at www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754666967.
Roudometof, Victor (Guest Editor) Negotiating Church - State Relations in Cyprus / Evolution des relations entre Eglise et Etat a Chypre, Special Issue of Social Compass [2009] Vol. 53 (1), pp. 5-83.
Brief description
This special issue of the journal represents the first time ever that the study of religion in Cyprus has been featured in a major international publication. The special issue consists of an introduction to the problematic of Church - State relations followed by individual articles that address all the religious communities of the island (Orthodox, Muslim, Maronite, Armenian, and Catholic). The articles cover a variety of topics. These range from the adjustment of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus to the post-1878 reality of British colonialism to comparative statistical analyses of religious attitudes among Greek and Turkish Cypriots (based on data from the World Values Survey) to the significance of religion for Turkish Cypriots and to the extent to which the island's smaller religious groups have been able to operate in an environment of religious pluralism.
Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age: Tradition Faces the 21st Century, co-edited with Alexander Agadjanian & Jerry Pankhurst (Walnut Creek, Ca: Alta Mira Press, 2005).
Brief description
The goal of this volume is to place Eastern Orthodoxy within a new global context. While more-covered religions emerge as powerful transnational forces, Eastern Orthodoxy is often depicted as local, linked to the ethnicity and land of the now marginalized Eastern Europe. With its focus upon the maintenance of ecclesiastical tradition and correct liturgical practice, Eastern Orthodoxy has occasionally been seen to conflict with post-1989 neo-liberal developmental strategies that prioritize individual rights, privacy, democratization, and unimpeded transnational market development. Yet, as this volume shows, Orthodox Churches have in the past decade felt compelled to respond-positively, negatively, or otherwise-to these new challenges by promulgating new statements on social doctrines, ecumenism, civil society, and Church-State relations. The result is a refashioning of Eastern Orthodoxy that is both the product of and in tension with globalization processes. The picture that emerges is less of a people stubbornly refusing modernization, more of a people seeking to maintain a stable Orthodox identity in an unstable world.
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Communities Across Borders: New Immigrants and Transnational Cultures, co-edited with Paul Kennedy (London: Routledge, 2002).
Brief description
Communities Across Borders examines the many ways in which national, ethnic or religious groups, professions, businesses and cultures are becoming increasingly tangled together. This is as a result of the vast flows of people, meanings, goods and money which now migrate between countries and world regions. Now the effectiveness and significance of electronic technologies for inter-personal communication (including cyber-communities and the interconnectedness of the global world economy) simultaneously empowers even the poorest people to forge effective cultures stretching national borders, and compels many to do so to escape injustice and deprivation. The consequences of constructing new, or replenishing older, transnational communities of nationality, interest or symbolic power - either for those directly involved, or for the countries and cultures on which they impact - are varied, as the case studies in this book testify. Topical themes analyzed include:
- Symbolic forms of resistance against earlier eras of cultural imperialism.
- The experience of host discrimination or unequal political systems.
- The dilemmas for governments faced by multiple transnational communities whose members are engaged in loyalties outside their borders.
- The expression of subtle personal or social relationships drawn together from several sites to form new hybrid cultural forms and identities.
Students of sociology, politics, development and cultural studies will find this book engrossing and revealing. As will scholars and the travelling public, interested in the issues raised by globalization, cultural and economic interdependency, and the opportunities offered by new technologies and the implications of the rise of ever more vibrant communities straddling borders, peoples and lifestyles.
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The Macedonian Question (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2000; Macedonian translation published in Skopje by Euro-Balkan Press, 2004).
Brief description
In the aftermath of the Kosovo Crisis, it is said that Macedonia will be next. This volume provides an in-depth, interdisciplinary analysis of the Macedonian Question. Illustrating the intimate connections between culture and ethnic politics in Macedonia, essays cover the construction of Macedonian national identity in Australia and Northern Greece; the ideological perspectives of opposing camps in the historiography of Macedonia; the interplay between politics and history writing in the Republic of Macedonia; the question of a Macedonian national minority in the Pirin region of Bulgaria; and the political and social relations between Albanians and Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia.
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American Culture in Europe: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, co-edited with Mike - Frank G. Epitropoulos (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).
Brief description
These essays examine the proliferation of American culture in Europe. Throughout the collection, the authors raise the issue of the degree to which Europe becomes "Americanized". They examine in concrete detail the way this process operates with reference to specific research areas such as advertising, consumerism, science, law, and politics.
Most of the essays suggest a great variation in the manner in which American cultural influences are appropriated within specific European countries. Such appropriation is conditioned by the local needs and perceptions as well as the way local elites employ "Americanization" in order to bolster their own context specific political agendas. This variation suggests that "Americanization" is a label frequently employed to describe the more multifaceted and complex process of globalization. This collection of essays will be of special interest to students and scholars involved with Cultural Studies, Sociology, and European Studies.
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Collective Memory, National Identity & Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria & the Macedonian Question (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).
Brief description
Roudometof provides an in-depth analysis of inter-ethnic relations in the southern Balkans. He examines the evolution of the Macedonian Question and the production of rival national narratives by Greeks, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. He introduces the concept of a national narrative in order to account for the production and proliferation of different forms of collective memory among the rival nation-states. Roudometof deconstructs the national narratives of the competing sides and shows the limits of these narratives and their biases. He also develops an alternative interpretation of Macedonian national formation.
The contentious issue of Macedonian national minorities in the southern Balkans is examined as well as the issue of the Albanian movements toward self-determination and succession in Kosovo and western Macedonia. Roudometof argues that the Macedonian minority groups are not as numerous in the neighboring states as it is conventionally assumed. With regard to the Albanian national question, he provides a review of the post-1945 relations between Albania and Greece, the Albanians of Kosovo and the Serbs, and the Albanians and Macedonians. He argues that the Albanian nationalist movements have grown out of the interaction between Albanians and their neighboring nations and ethnic groups. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with the Balkans and ethnic conflict resolution in general.
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Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origins of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001).
World History, Contributions to the Study of, No. 89 (ISSN: 0885-9159) Greenwood Press. Westport, Conn. 2001, Pages LC 00-069154. ISBN 0-313-31949-9. GM1949.
Brief description
Roudometof provides an in-depth sociological analysis of the birth and historical evolution of nationalism in the Balkans. The rise of nationalism in the region is viewed as part of a world-historical process of globalization over the last five centuries. With the growing contacts between the Ottoman Empire and the Western European system, the Eastern Orthodox of the Balkans abandoned the enthoconfessional system of social organization in favor of secular national identities. Prior to 1820, local nationalism was influenced by the Enlightenment, though later it came to be developed on an "ethnonational" basis. In the post-1830 Balkans, citizenship rights were subordinated to ethnic nationalism, according to which membership to a nation is accorded on the basis of church affiliation and ethnicity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the discourse of nationhood was institutionalized by the native intelligentsia of the Balkan states. In the first half of the twentieth century, the efforts of Balkan states to achieve national homogenization produced interstate rivalry, forced population exchanges, and discrimination against minority groups. While the Cold War helped contain some of these problems, the post-1989 period has seen a return of these issues to the forefront of the Balkan political agenda.
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