How Capitals get Distinct?

[aim of the paper: approach distinction as a positive, or productive result of the process of Balkanization]

[with references to:
-Maria Todorova: Imagining the Balkans (chapter one Nomen),
-Vesna Goldsvorthy: The Rhetoric of Balkanization (from Balkan as Metaphor, MIT Press)
-Elizabeth Grosz, three essays from The Architecture from the Outside (Lived Spatiality, Futures, Cities, Architecture & The Architecture from the Outside
-Pierre Burdieux, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 1979/1984, Routledge,
La Distinction, a sociological book by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), takes as its basis Bourdieu's empirical research carried out in 1963 and concluded in 1967/68. The original publication took place in 1979 in France. Richard Nice translated the work into English, and it appeared in the United States in 1984 under the title Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. In his often densely-worded prose, Bourdieu discussed how those in power define aesthetic concepts such as "taste". Using research, he shows how social class tends to determine a person's likes and interests, and how distinctions based on social class get reinforced in daily life. He observes that even when the subordinate classes may seem to have their own particular idea of 'good taste', "...[i]t must never be forgotten that the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics..."
[from Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary]:
distinction
1 aarchaic : division b: class 4
2: the distinguishing of a difference ; also : the difference distinguished
3: something that distinguishes
4: the quality or state of being distinguishable
5 a: the quality or state of being distinguished or worthy b: special honor or recognition c: an accomplishment that sets one apart

balkanization
[from Wikipedia]:
Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. The term has arisen from the conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. The first balkanization was embodied in the Balkan Wars, and the term was reaffirmed in the Yugoslav wars. The amount of "Yugoslavian" territory officially controlled by Belgrade has been reduced piece by piece since 1991.
The term is also used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance, the subdivision of the Internet being divided into separate enclaves[citation needed], and the breakdown of cooperative arrangements due to the rise of independent competitive entities.. Balkanization is sometimes used to refer to the divergence over time of programming languages and data file formats. The term has been used in American urban planning to describe the process of creating gated communities.
There are also attempts to use the term balkanization in a positive way equating it with the need for sustenance of a group or society.This paper’s main occupation is to delve beyond the allegory of Balkanization and the history of its meaning from negative to positive. 1

What follows below does not aim to be polemical nor promotional of Western Balkan values, but rather operates as a framework for discourse and further research. The main aspect of this research is happening during the ongoing process of making capitals in the Western Balkans. There recently used to be one capital city, of the former Yugoslavia, and now there are eight capital cities. All these new capital cities are not only confirming their status, they are actively remaking themselves, what is most interesting, as distinct from each other. To be distinct is, within the framework of capital making, seen as most positive. Between all eight capitals of nation states, but as well as emerging regional capitals of provinces, we are witnessing a process of self-determination to be seen as distinguished from the others, and not to be against each other.
Making a capital city may be one of the most positive aspects of Balkanization as a process, which came out of rampant and brief history of divisions. I argue that this process can be seen through the lens of the discourse of distinction. The discourse of distinction, goes beyond the esthetic theory of an urban form, or architectural space as the issues of taste are involved. My other argument is that making a capital city distinct from each other may be much closer to research the advent of the sublime in the process, over beautiful.

At the same time, reading this paper shall have in mind Pierre Burdieux definition of the distinction and class. Especially the claim that when the subordinate classes may seem to have their own particular idea of 'good taste', "...[i]t must never be forgotten that the working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics..." Due to the demise of socialism in the Western Balkans, the working class of former Yugoslavia and Albania, has today mutated as a different class. In the previous system of liberal socialism, this class was privileged by legal rights when compared to the East Communist Block, but the source aesthetics was dictated by the state. Today this group is largely unprivileged vis-a-vis larger European community including former East Block, however it evades the dominance of Western aesthetics.

The most apparent aspect quality of Balkanisation processes is distinction. Seen deeper, it is the normality of the need to be distinct that is taking shape, and that is shaping contemporary Western Balkans, nation by nation and capital by capital. There was only one capital in former Yugoslavia, but now there are eight national capitals, including Prishtina the latest capital city in the region. Thus eight capitals are all, even in different countries, competing to be distinct and noticed, and this cultural competition comes all the way down to architecture and urbanism via the use of iconic symbolism. The positive aspect of this process is of course the emerging knowledge, times eight, about how to be distinct architecturally in the see of sameness. The problem of this aspect is that all the attention is still veered towards a Western European eye and with an immense desire to be excepted as a European with a content based on the right to be different among the nations. The eight distinct approaches by the Western capitals are telling, as none of the eight wants to be the same as the other, thus creating a chorus of distinct voices, or shapes.

Balkanisation can be explained by the self-propelled desire for distinction within a densely networked neighborhood, to be distinct from the others nearby, and to find ways and means of achieving this goal, sometimes by any means necessary. But also, according to the Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova, Balkanisation has historical dimension of repeated rejection of its Western christian dimension against the Muslim; the Balkan in the name derives from a Turkish word. Yet, I think that this desire has a profound impact on the layers of physical and virtual interventions above a territory as such and as the one that belongs to many. Today when everyone feels overwhelmed by the fallout idea of designing difference through appearance, like branding does, the Western Balkans do their own thing to distinct themselves among many in a sort of sincere, if not basic way. In my opinion, the emerging Western Balkan capitals, all attempting to be distinct, can serve as good models for the future of Europe to come, which they are part of. At the same time, as a historian Giancarlo Marainello pointed out, Europe always reformulates itself as a consequence of itself having always been fractured. Europe is allegedly based on being divided before being united and its history and reality is the one of managed separations. Sometimes the separations were managed badly, which resulted in great losses, so to focus of how to manage rather than what to manage has come into play many times. The Western Balkans, today dispersed may be analogous to some prototypical state of Europe that makes itself visible as an oddball to the unification trends in the EU. In fact the Western Balkans may just be too close to an analogy of warring states which Europe really wants to leave behind. There, where the theory of European territory, and legality, stops, we have spatial practices and networks across the ethnic nation states in the Western Balkans, which hold true against the divisions. These practices often have cross-national connection as one of their primary mission statements. They are basically practices that are locked in a locality, but that always need to be present somewhere else as well, as a reproduction of the locality. I think that Balkanisation complex of knowledge is a source pool to investigate the future of locality with Europe.

Balkanization is an unfinished project, analogical to Modernism itself. The expressions of Balkanization, are sought not just within a built space or urbanity, but as the urbanity itself, and as itself being distinct from any near urbanity. The distinction drive, here takes over from pursuing a common taste alone and the standards of esthetic perception.

Western Balkans cannot be explained by a regular EU terminology simply because this territory would quickly be labelled illegal by EU standards. These standards refer to the EU's own measure of land and sovereignty. However, the EU's insistence on the Western Balkan term somehow works half way and it is an almost all right thing to call the thing. The Balkan in the Western Balkan amalgamation is the remnant of the Turkish presence in one of its pasts. The Western in it is the signifier for the ongoing Balkan's Westernization. This means the legal territorial separation of the land from its geographical constraints; from the geographical Balkans, the Greek Peninsula and etymological Balkans, and from the eponymous mountain ridge departing from Bulgaria. When the geographical and etymological are taken away then there is only Western that remains to be deployed as strategy to situate this piece of Europe within the European Union. On the other hand, there is no agency today other than the International Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that will define how far the Westernization shall go. Thus Western Balkans is always on the verge of being seen as becoming a wild territory within a legal framework, as in the analogy to the Wild West in the American West.

But while its history is packed with negative emotion and interpretation, its reality in other worlds than itself and potential for future are seen as positive. Because, a most important issue in making a capital city is the culture that is producing it, its character, and its particularities. In the Western Balkans, there are thus eight capital cities, allegedly enabled by eight distinct cultures. Thus we do not only have the reproduction of difference among the cities, we have a multiple solidification of culture taking shape with the cities as their capital representation.
These new South Eastern European capitals are: Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Skopje, Podgorica, Tirana, most recently Prishtina, and most traditionally old capital Belgrade. There are also capitals of existing of emerging autonomous entities, like Novi Sad (Vojvodina), Rijeka (Istria), Brcko (Capital District, US govern), Banja Luka (Serbian entiry in Bosnia) and Kosovska Mitrovica (capital enclave in Kosovo). Each of them, some less, some more, depending on the means are trying to self-fashion themselves as distinguishable from each other, and also as deriving from a different culture base from each other, which they try to prove and solidify in physical form.

After almost a century in the shadow of one capital, Belgrade, the detached cities in the Western Balkans felt freed to exemplify a new identity. Priština, for example, which grew rapidly in population during the Balkan crisis of the 1990s, decorated its main street with a miniature Statue of Liberty, and named the street William Jefferson Clinton as a tribute to the American president’s support of their position against then Yugoslav president, Slododan Milošević. Belgrade, meanwhile, built extensive rooftop additions resembling mushrooms, a massive new Orthodox shrine, and a glitzy field of Turbo Architecture in a mix of high-tech and neo-Byzantium styles. The town of Mostar renovated its famous Ottoman-era bridge destroyed by Bosnian Croats in 1995; the city also built a sculpture of Bruce Lee, perhaps the only famous figure not to have harmed any of the three sides in the recent war. Thanks to Serbian refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, Novi Sad has doubled in population and privatized a now rich Danube river coastline named Valley of Thieves. Skopje’s new fluorescent cross that overlooks the city is just one more in the vibrant mix of Roman, Byzantium, Ottoman, Communist, and New Orthodox Christian monuments. In Tirana, artist-cum-mayor Edi Rama paints buildings in bright colors and abstract patterns, while in Ljubljana, leading architecture firms imitate Tirana’s lively patterns of colors in their façade designs for high architectural building projects. Also there in Ljubljana, an almost deviant form of city building is reached by huge developments of BTC City areas into becoming the city as well as almost baroque approach to neo-modernism in the work of design offices like Sadar&Vuga. In stark contrast, Sarajevo, renovated by Europeans and Americans together, has become a forgotten town hurt by the heavy brain-drain and sinking into apathy. Nonetheless, the city recently found itself at the forefront of the film industry and a test field for public-private investments in high culture and projects in religious tolerance. And in Zagreb and Croatia coastline, a new neo-modernist awareness sprang up, as well as scores of innovative architectural designs for schools, kindergartens and other places of social standard.

This various landscape is today called Post-Socialist landscape. It would not be called such if it were not for the multiple, but systematic opposition to socialist architecture and urbanism. As in Turbo architecture, which grew vehemently against clean modernist forms, Turbo Urbanism may be rising against the clarity of the urban versus rural territory. Thus it may be that the rise of radical forces will be seen primarily in the expression of ambiguity and evasion. Any form of the city produced by the forces of ambiguity and evasions together is struggling with being mapped, but it likely to be legalized.
But to remind, though Balkanization is a term of relatively recent derivation, the phenomenon extends several centuries into the past. Fragmentation of the Byzantine Empire into emerging ethnic kingdoms marked the entire fourteenth century on the Balkan Peninsula. The coming Ottoman Empire seized large parts of Byzantine territories, but it had to redraw until the pressure of its own fall. This caused the constant realignment of emerging local borders while the impact of the empire’s full retreat have was being felt. The next working solution was the empire established by the Serbian aristocracy, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, as a modern solution to unify the fragments; it failed during World War II. The last political solution for the unity of the territory was communist. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, masterminded by the Slovene self-thought philosopher Edvard Kardelj, lasted half a decade, a little less than the life-span of its creators. However, the fall of this last empire in the 1990s shows its tight political relationship to both modernization and Modernism as its expression. Thus Balkanization, can be seen as the continuity of the processes seeking particularity, religious fragmentation and finally territorial specificity. The territorial specifics are today protected and guaranteed by the emerging nation states, and their particular looks.
It is useful here to rewrite Maria Todorova survey the origins of the name Balkan, of Turkish origin, in the context of its debasement in the Western literature. For two millennia the Greek Haemus was naming the ridge that defines South Eastern Europe. The earliest mention of the Balkan name is from an Italian humanist and diplomat Filippo Buonaccorsi Callimaco from 15th century. He noted that it was Balkan, not Haemus, as how local people called the mountain. The next account is by a Dalmatian diplomat Anton Vranic in 1549, who refused to use the Balkan term, and used Slavic iteration Emo, as well as Stara Planina (old mountain) to refer to the mountain ridge. Next was German diplomat Salomon Schweigger in 1577, also an early translator of Qur’an to German, who used the Turkish Balkan name in his travel accounts, but also Slavic Comonitza. In 1628 the ridge was called Balban, by Martin Grunberg, erroneously ascribing it the the Rhodopes. In 1608 Balkan was used by the Armenian traveller Simeon trir Lehatsi. In French, again by a diplomat, Louis Deshayes de Cormanin, the Balkan is used to denote a mountain with bare cliffs, as opposed to mountains covered with woods. In 1740 it is used by Caiptan Schad. In 1762 Rudjer Boskovic, scientist from Dubrovnik used the Turkish word Balkan for the mountain ridge. More in 1770s follow more usage of the Balkan term by the French travelers, while the Armenian geographers now exclusively use the Balkan term. In the 19th century, Austrian cartographers use Balkan term. The British traveller educated at Cambridge traveling to Constantinople notes the mountain ridge in 1794 as already “debased by the name Bal.Kan.” The ridge previously called Haemus had been considered “classic ground” in the 18th century in British romantic roots and was always called that before. The British travelers prefer using Balkan term for the mountain in the 19th century. The Russian travelers used Balkan term without a problem since 1800, even during the Russian-Turkish war. The Russians add “glory” to the Balkans. There were also revisions of the term, especially by Robert Walsh who mapped the Balkan ridge to be crossing from the Bay of Venice to the Black Sea.

The first usage of the Balkan peninsula was in 1808 by a German geographer August Zeune. Robert Walsh was the first known to use Balkan for a collective territory referring to exclusively Greek priests serving the territory by the mid-19th century. In the second part of the 19th century the term Balkan peninsula is ubiquitous. It is then also called “European Turkey.” This is also the time when a more politically correct for the European standards: South East Europe started to be used by German geographer. It is until this day that the two terms are used connoting the very same territory: South East Europe and the Balkans. South East Europe as the neutral term which would wipe out the divisions, and the Balkan as the common term, which is still used to point out to the distinct nature of its inhabitants.

In the Ottoman world the word Balkan was present since 14th century and it came with the invasion of Europe. Bal means mud, kan is Turkish diminutive.

The term Balkanization comes with the increasing use the Balkans with a political connotation. New York Times is the first to publish the term in 1918 to relate to the aftermath of World War I in Europe. It wrongly glues Balkanization to the nationalistic mini-state making, as the states already existed before the WWI, but it solidifies the Balkanization in the political imaginary as the decomposing force, and as nomen nudum, one that has not standing because it has never been validated by a description. However, it became scientifically a valid term in biology to label biological species from a common territory.

Beyond its exhaustive refusal to be named, this historic survey of the term Balkanization is used here in order to establish continuity in one aspect to contemporary society. That is a right to distinction, which bring also the right for spatial and iconographic expression, distinguished from other representations. This sudden ‘right’ of course is also often abused to become the right for ulterior national determinations, which come together with the ideology of nationalistic particularity. It is where the ulterior motives finally come out to the surface under the pretext of democracy, or liberation. But it is also where the ulterior energy faces challenges of systems of languages and policies which are top down. And they are productively top down because of the power of managing the dangers of national distinction via a higher order or strategy. This higher order is the one that manages the dispersal and administrates it better than the self-styled mini-efforts of mini-states.

This power was the trademark of socialist Yugoslavia, a former entity established in 1943, during the World War II, on the remains of the previous Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Todorova argues that Yugoslavia as a project was in fact the opposite of Balkanization, a unity that reversed the fragmentation. I would like to propose on the contrary that Yugoslavia has embraced Balkanization as it had been done before. It had disguised it behind the liberal socialist image of unity. One of the main aspects of the Yugoslav constitution included official policy of “de-etatization” (literally: the process of dissolving or dispersing central state powers to local and national communities). Being cautious of Serbian unitarism having a capital city within Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Tito and Kardelj gave distinct powers to local political entities in the constitution, which included scales from the neighborhood to republics and autonomous provinces. For example this dispersing policy created Kosovo and Vojvodina with a right to veto state policies. Such amalgamated condition, which allowed Yugoslavia to be a bridge between the sides in the Cold War has often been criticized as unsustainable, i.e. not central enough to remain after its partisan creators from the World War II leave the stage. All former republics are today recognized nation states, Kosovo is today in the process of being recognized as the distinct nation state, while Vojvodina has a distinct political autonomy within Serbia. Instead of a single capital, today there are eight national capital cities and one capital of an autonomous province. They are independent from each other politically, but not fully economically. Thus they all struggle to attract foreign attention and investment, and they all find a particular way of doing it, however routed in the local political powers enjoyed via the Yugoslav policy of de-etatization. Yugoslavia has not only reversed Balkanization, it has made it possible, and at the end productive for all new capitals.

The policy of dispersion, imbedded into the constitution of socialist Yugoslavia, was also an engine behind the distribution of equal social programs across the territory of amalgamated nations. This distribution had an instant need for architecture and urbanism. All regional capitals were to have cluster of new social realm, typically made of: a museum, cultural centre, sports center and recreation. Time nine capitals the state thus produced plenty of jobs for architects. Architectural schools were reborn, although only in capital cities and a certain profiling of who is best in what took place. Museum of Revolution were usually designed by Croatian architects, the cultural centers by Slovenian architects and Sport centers by Bosnian architects. Architects from Belgrade were already very busy with housing and office programs, as well as infrastructure, while the school in Sarajevo made its name in historical restoration. Macedonian architects had a surge only in late ‘60s with after the earthquake that left Skopje in ruins. Appointed by the UN, a young team of Japanese architects, already known as Metabolists, led by Kenzo Tange, and supported by Arata Isozaki designed the brutalist master for Skopje and allowed for local architects to express romantic sensibilities in concrete. These examples were rarely included in the pan-Yugoslav monographs.

It is the same policy of de-etatization that generated a program for allowing the population to have outdoor recreation across both urban and rural landscapes, without hierarchies. This program gave projects mostly to engineers to build open fields almost everywhere and the law to protect them. For its flexible size and geometry, the handball stadiums were most preferred open space, as the field can be used for smaller games and for soccer. But more importantly the law protected open spaces became socially viable for all sorts of meetings, events and later performances. As most of the fields were done simply, the standards for sport and competition could not be fulfilled. It would make more sense to use the stadiums for cultural and spontaneous public events, especially rock, and later alternative concerts. Thus the open stadiums stood more, and did more, for a mix of population benefiting from the policy of dispersal, than city squares and parks. The stadiums were often, thanks to specific geometry, equally large, or even larger than urban squares. Thanks to non-hierarchical planning, the stadiums could be either centrally located or on the periphery, with equal legal status. The ones centrally located would naturally attract more culturally oriented public than city squares, and so in some alternative sense be experienced as more open and protected.

The damaging decade of nationalism and crisis in the Wester Balkans during the ’90s resulted in the large neglect of the open stadiums as social places. This today yields dangerous outcomes as youth discovers right-wing extremism to express itself more and more. A typical example of this situation can be read in one of the handball stadiums stranded in the centre of Novi Sad, capital of Vojvodina. The stadium is in decay, surrounded by a wall and is in danger to be dismantled and replaced by private development. The loss would be great, as this is one of the last remaining such stadiums, centrally located in a city, surrounded by government and cultural programs.

[In 2005, a campaign was initiated to preserve this public space from removal. Thanks to collaboration with a local non-profit, research focused on legal status of the stadium today. What is important is the discovery that this area still exists and persists precisely under the policy of Tito’s de-etatization. This stadium is a direct descendant. The legal rights belong to the state that inherited the property. This also means that the legal framework for planning is routed in the policy made during former Yugoslavia.

Thus the main challenge is not only to renovate existing open handball stadium, it is also to preserve the modality of its existence. Besides the need to preserve the openness of the public space in the post-socialist public realm, the challenge is to invent a cultural entity that can operate it. The proposal consists of adding a new media program to the existing hardware in order to cover two agents of youth activity: sports and electronic media. The positive aspect of fragmented socialist space is that it will be small enough to achieve local sustenance, but distinct as a solution to attract much wider social realm. Thanks to electronic media this is far beyond the limits of the post-socialist city, and thanks to the reused hardware of the stadium the social exchange has a place and happens locally.]

Besides the issue of distinction vis-a-vis the process of Balkanization, post-socialism brings another key issue to the surface: the architecture of self-organization, and its perception form the outside. The main challenge here is to re-ascribe fragments of socialist ideology, such as self-management policy, as a positive aspect of contemporary Balkan situation.

The conundrum in doing so at large including all the capital cities from the Western Balkans is in the quality of expressions of self-management in place. The second obstacle is the perception of what self-management mutates into in a post-socialist realm in different cities and now nation states. The self-management itself is a hailed, but complex policy from Tito’s and Kardelj constitution which empowered the working class to vote and decide on many crucial issues. It also empowered mostly lower working class living in rural areas to built homes and enjoy popular culture for itself. This culture was considered, and labeled as kitsch, neo-folk, but it was prevalent and dominant. One of its main products is Turbo Folk culture, first a clumsy collision of Western and Eastern sources. Today after a decade and a half of self-development, it considered a mainstream, popular and urban culture.

The aspect of distinction is also detectable through the relationship that the post-socialist realm developed with illegality in the city. To apprehend the illegality in post-socialism, we need to understand the legal framework of socialism and what was it left off, after its fall in particular territories. The legal framework of Yugoslav socialism permitted all forms of spatial intervention that fulfilled the policy of de-etatization and decentralization. It also guarantied social amenities to anyone, including housing. This was in exchange for property ownerships. But the system also allow for self-organized, family style construction as long as minimum paperwork was provided and as long as it would be for housing or work. The policy took in consideration that it is better to have self-organized ‘wild’ construction registered with the system, rather than to sanction it. After all, the small interventions were seen as positive in regards to the policy of decentralization. As a result the new dichotomy between the city and the village grew rapidly as between a place that is maintain to be distinctly proper (the city) and the place that is allowed to be wild, free and taxed for producing kitsch (village).

With the change of the systems, the fall of federal socialism, and the advent of ethnic states and enclaves, the situation changes. There was no federal system to maintain the bipolar status between the city and village. In fact it became difficult to keep funding streams from tax on immense neo-folk production, and it also became impossible to fund the city cleansed from rural culture. Besides, the Tito & Kardelj’s ideology vanished and was replaced by ethnic state rhetoric, each adapting it to its own situation. This produced vast distinctions between the Western Balkan capitals how to deal with rise of its own rural population, now strong enough to claim cities on their own, or simply redefine the capitals to their own taste.

The aspect of distinction is key to understand the process that follows, which is the unwritten policy for individualism. Supported by the limited legal backing from the socialist period, illegal construction was tolerated by being taxed post-fact-um. But now the new ethnic authorities looked away and the amount of illegal construction surged to the point that it could be masked anymore. It was now not enough only to realize oneself through the legal framework only to be distinct. To be distinguished from the others it became necessary to violate the norm, and as a result to distort the urban form.
What remains to be challenged is whether the distinction and taste come together in the way it is predicted in Pierre Burdieux treatise on distinction. Or are we able to discuss a different approach to distinction, which is subverting the roles between the former worker class and the ruling class. What would be the ways to theorize this condition, if Burdieux’s refusal to accept popular aesthetics as culture is further challenged?