Introduction: Nation, State and Faith in the Post-Communist Era
The growing specter of Muslim migrants has triggered a bourgeoning research on processes of contestation, adaptation and manifestations of Islam in Europe. In contrast, the resurgence of Islam across the post-communist Balkans, the historical stronghold of Muslims in Europe, has gone largely unnoticed. If we heard about them, it was usually in the context of allegiances to the state, the rise of nationalism and violent conflicts brought to world attention by the media in the early 1990s. The violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia has certainly sparked some academic interest concerning the Muslim communities involved, but the ferocity of the various conflicts has contributed to constraining research only to the most striking cases and particular moments in time (Poulton and Taji-Farouki 1997: 1). The occurrence of war and conflict has, moreover, left the exploration of the Islamic phenomena to the mercy of nationalism and post-conflict paradigms, which have essentialized religion in line with ethno-national divisions of the day (Henig and Bielenin-Lenczowska 2013). Consequently, mainstream research tends to analyze religious groups as a repository of clear-cut ethno-national identities, the ends of which are closely monitored by the state in the interest of imposing communal uniformity and charting well-defined criteria for inclusion and exclusion.
Reconstructing the past in a post-Ottoman village: Turkishness in a transnational context
This study analyzes transformations of historiography and identity discourses by focusing on the Memory House of Ali Rıza Efendi (the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) as a “site of historical consciousness” which was reconstructed in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia. The House, referred to by the villagers as the “Memory House of Atatürk,” was opened in 2014 in a Muslim village, Kocacık, with the support of the Turkish state. Through material and textual representations of Atatürk’s life, the House speaks to the Turkishness and Turkish presence in the Balkans. The Turkishness, however, is imagined through the neo-Ottoman and Islamic prisms. The House thus becomes the locus of alternative interpretations of the past, and, consequently, narratives of Muslims’ identity and origin in the region. Moreover, as it is reconstructed at the nexus of the local and the transnational, the House is also called a symbol of the “politics of brotherhood” between Macedonia and Turkey. In this way, the institution embodies the reconstruction of the past not only at the local and national levels, but also at the international level.
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.