Research Agenda (1990 - 2010)
1. Research Overview (1990-2003)
For the better part of the 1990s and up until 2003, most of my research was directed toward the study of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. This research agenda led to the publication of two sole-authored monographs that examine how the articulation of ethnic nationalism led to chronic conflict and insecurity in the region.
In my 2001 book, Nationalism, Globalization and Orthodoxy, I argued that the world-historical process of globalization is connected with the historical trajectory of the Eastern Mediterranean. While prior to 1820, nationalism emerged as an ideology strongly colored by Enlightenment ideology, it came later to be developed on an "ethno-national" basis. I suggest that this tendency has been the outcome of the historical process of nation building in the region over the last 150 years.
Specifically, the differential perception and adaptation of two global discourses shaping the meaning of the term "nation" have been crucial to the local routes toward modernity. Within the discourse of citizenship, membership of a "nation" is fundamentally political and pertains to the rights and obligations of a citizen vis-à-vis the political community to which he or she belongs. In sharp contrast, nationhood implies the employment of particularistic criteria – most often derived from a local culture – as the basic foundations for the construction of a distinct national identity. Within this discourse, the "nation" is an entity constructed in terms of the genealogical or cultural ties of a particular ethnic group or ethnic community. Lack of acculturation into the legitimate national culture provides a justification for a person's exclusion from the nation's "imagined community". This argument leads to the conclusion that the rise of ethnic conflict in the Balkans is of recent historical origin and owes much to the region's experience of transition to the modern world of bureaucracies and nation-states.
In early 2003, the publication of my second monograph, National Identity, Collective Memory and Ethnic Conflict, allowed me to apply this broad interpretation to the study of an on-going contemporary controversy, that of the Macedonian Question. In the monograph, historical research and interpretation are intertwined with the analysis of the contemporary, post-1991 contest between Greece (and to a lesser extent Bulgaria), on the one hand, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYR – Macedonia), on the other hand, over the heritage of Macedonian culture and history. The book also covers the post-1945 evolution of Albanian nationalism in Kosovo and FYR-Macedonia – up until the conclusion of the 2001 civil strife between Macedonians and Albanians.
These monographs provide the foundation for my post-2003 research at the University of Cyprus – and form the backbone of my post-2003 research agenda.
2. Research Agenda (2003-2008)
Following the publication of these monographs & my move to Cyprus my research interests have been redirected to other avenues of inquiry. Over the last four years, my work has focused mostly on (A) the area of cultural theory & cultural sociology (and specifically on transnationalism, cosmopolitanism & globalization), and (B) on the sociology of religion (and specifically on Eastern Orthodox Christianity).
With regard to cultural theory & cultural sociology, my work has focused on the theoretical and to a degree, empirical investigation of the key concepts of cosmopolitanism, globalization and transnationalism. Of special significance for my work has been the relatively recent concept of glocalization. This concept is a refinement of the older concept of globalization and refers to the simultaneous blend of the "global" and "local" and the creation of new hybrid forms of locales, identities, modernity, and culture. In several articles and chapters, I have examined the relationship of glocalization to transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Most importantly, in my 2005 article in Current Sociology, I have analyzed the relationship among glocalization, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism & argued that transnationalism and cosmopolitanism should not be blended; for they are analytically distinct from each other.
With regard to transnationalism, I have examined the construction of new transnational ties in the edited volume on Communities Across Borders (2002; paperback, 2006). The volume employs a broad definition that makes it possible to examine not only the movement of peoples from one country to another, but also the migration of cultural practices (such as pop music or soccer) across borders. In addition to my theoretical engagement with this topic, I have also used qualitative and historical methods in several articles and chapters on the Hellenic Diaspora & the Greek American community – such as an article on the Greek Americans' conceptualization of racial categories (Karpathakis and Roudometof, 2004). The most recently published contributions on this topic are my chapters on nationalism and transnationalism in Europe (in the Handbook of European Studies) & on nationalism and globalization (in Nations and Nationalisms: A Global Historical Overview).
Special reference should be made here to my two special issues on collective memory I have edited for the Journal of Political and Military Sociology (2003; 2007). A total of 11 articles were included to these issues, which represent an effort to connect the field of politics to the fields of heritage and memory studies. My interest in this field was sparked by the writing of my 2nd monograph and continues to this day. The 2007 special issue of JPMS is partly based on the memory panels I organized for the 37th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology (Stockholm, Sweden, 2005). My Introduction to the 2007 special issue summarizes my own reading and conceptualization of the sociology of memory.
With regard to sociology of religion, my interest in religion grew out of the close connections between religious and national identities in Eastern Europe. My articles, volumes and chapters examine the dynamics of Eastern Orthodox Christianity both in its totality as well as in selected countries (Romania, Greece, Cyprus, and North America). Editing the volume Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age (Alta Mira Press, 2005) offered me the opportunity to present an overview of the state of post-1989 Eastern Orthodoxy. The volume is divided into two parts. The first part includes descriptions of religious responses by several Eastern European churches (Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and Greece) to the challenges of globalization and post-1989 integration into the common European home. The second part consists of explorations of the transnational dimension of Eastern Orthodoxy, including recent developments in the Eastern Orthodox churches of North America.
Following its publication, I authored an article on the relationship among globality, territoriality and Orthodox Christianity. It appeared in 2008 in the journal Sociology of Religion. In this article, I am suggesting that the experience of globality leads to competing religious responses of de-territorialization and re-territorialization. In turn, these responses lead to acute conflict between Orthodox religious institutions. In contrast to the view that Orthodoxy is a branch of Christianity out of touch with broader cross-national trends, I argue that globalization and globality have had a profound impact in shaping the orientation and future direction of Orthodox institutions. From this point of view, the article employs the recently widely publicized conflict between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Orthodox Church of Greece (2003-04) as a contemporary example that illustrates the proposed socio-historical interpretation.
3. Research (2009 - 2010)
Currently, there are several projects in process: These relate directly to the areas of my previous work and extend my past research into the present.
First, I have co-edited (with Prof. Vasilios N. Makrides) a volume on Orthodox Christianity in 21st Century Greece (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009). This volume includes a total 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. The volume's 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. This project grew out of the panels on Greek Orthodoxy, organized for the 2005 Congress of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR, Zagreb, Croatia).
Second, I have collected material and conducted an analysis of the 2006 Archiepiscopal elections of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. Different papers based on this material have already been presented in conferences and workshops in 2007. Using the 2006 elections as my point of departure, I am examining the evolution of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus from its post-1878 post-colonial experience to its current status. I argue that, contrary to conventional arguments about Orthodox exceptionalism, the Orthodox Church of Cyprus is currently entering a phase of normalization, whereby its institutional structures correspond to the conventional patterns of Eastern Orthodox administration and governance. In this regard, the Church's past nation-leading role should be considered situational and not trans-historical. This paper has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion (2009). A different part of that discussion also forms the basis for a chapter on the Orthodox Church of Cyprus during the Cold War period, to appear in a volume on Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, edited by Lucian Leustean (London and New York: Routledge, 2009 / 2010).
Third, I served as guest editor for a special issue of the journal Social Compass (2009), focusing on Church - State relations in Cyprus. This special issue is an extension of my efforts to include Cyprus in the field of the sociology of religion & it partly grew out of my role as Cyprus Correspondent for EUREL. It is the first time ever that a major scholarly journal has devoted an issue on this topic. The special issue consists of an introduction and four articles: The topics range from analyses of the 2006 World Values Survey in both parts of the island to an examination of the role of minority religions in Cyprus to historical analyses of the role of Orthodoxy and Islam in the island's political and cultural life. In addition to authoring the introductory article, I co-authored (with Michael N. Mihail, from the University of Cyprus' Turkish Studies Department) an article that discusses the post-1878 evolution of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. We argue that the imposition of British colonial rule in Cyprus led to the Church's loss of statute and income. The Church's prolonged crisis contributed to the hierarchy's endorsement of nationalism as a strategy that allowed the hierarchs to regain a highly visible role in the island's public sphere. In turn, this strategy provided for the conceptual underpinnings for the Church's nation-leading role in the course of the 20th century.
Fourth, following the publication of my 2005 Current Sociology article on the relationship between cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, I have continued to participate in the ongoing scholarly conversation on cosmopolitanism through efforts to operationalize the concept of cosmopolitanism using cross-national statistical methods. Jointly with William Haller (Sociology, Clemson University) we operationalized the cosmopolitan - local continuum I originally developed in my 2005 article & tested its applicability using the 1995 ISSP National Identity module data from Western and Eastern Europe (see Roudometof and Haller, 2007). Initial results have been promising and current work has continued in the same direction, aiming to expand the scope of the research into a more standard cross-national analysis among the advanced industrialized countries, using the 1995 and 2003 ISSP data in order to detect whether the turn of the 21st century has brought increased or decreased levels of cosmopolitanism around the globe.
