Globalizing Eastern Europe - by Gilad Ben-Nun & Katja Castryck-Naumann & Lena Dallywater (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

For far too long, views of Eastern Europe as a negligible and peripheral region have shaped popular perceptions of this part of the world. Presenting new research, Globalizing Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture and Economics from the 18th to the 21st Century offers refreshing arguments to counter such misconceptions. Global politics and international law have been profoundly shaped by the experiences and expertise that emanated from this region. Migration to and from Eastern Europe, has fostered deep ties with neighbouring and distant societies, as have this area's literature and music. The importance of its agricultural development has reverberated in the global economy. This volume recasts Eastern Europe as a global region. It shows how people from this part of the world shaped the 'global', and how in turn, the 'global' shaped them. Authors from a range of disciplines, chart century-long traditions of entanglements and contemporary interactions. In doing so, this book further enriches the perennial debates regarding this region's spatial boundaries.

Review Quotes

"It is no coincidence that the cover of this book features Warsaw, a city caught between East and West, different cultures and languages, 'globalized' for centuries, voluntarily and forcibly, by Poles and Jews, Russians and Germans. At least until the early 1990s, I associated this city, where my family has lived for five generations, not so much with globalization as with isolation and backwardness. This book, pioneering and surprising, allows me to verify this view and look at Eastern Europe from a different, non-stereotypical side. It shows how diverse, innovative, and at the same time hardly noticed and appreciated the region's contribution to the global sphere of ideas, science or culture is. It demonstrates the need to look holistically, broadly, and deeply, and it teaches but also warns-a must-read for these difficult times." --Jerzy Kochanowski, University of Warsaw, Poland

"Whereas 'Eastern Europe' has conventionally been conceived as a product of the Cold War, this book challenges such traditional or isolationist perspectives, foregrounding exchanges and the multiple ways in which the societies in this part of Europe have positioned themselves in and towards global processes. Its purview is wide, including studies of interactions in economy and social issues, legal systems, international politics and culture, all of which adopt an actor-centred approach. In all these spheres the book offers a mine of new, little-known, findings that in many ways reshuffle our understanding of Eastern Europe away from essentializing clichés, towards 'process geography, ' diversity, and human agency, that have all been vital in shaping the destinies of this region's societies.
This excellent volume also makes an important contribution to the currently vibrant debates on 'socialist globalization', its nature, ambitions, and effects. Methodologically as well as conceptually, it joins the field at a time of major reconfigurations of both Eastern Europe as a historical region following the Russian aggression against Ukraine, and of the process of globalization that is seemingly 'backsliding'." --Diana Mishkova, Centre for Advanced Study Sofia, Bulgaria

About the Author

Gilad Ben-Nun is professor for global studies at Leipzig University, where he teaches history of International Law, and Muslim-Jewish relations.

Katja Castryck-Naumann is senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) Leipzig.

Lena Dallywater is researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig, Germany and coordinator of the Leibniz Science Campus "Eastern Europe - Global Area" (EEGA).