In Banja Luka a landmark trial has been launched by the Bosnia's Islamic Community over compensation for more than 3000 buildings, among which many historical monuments, destroyed or damaged in the 1990s war. Hoped for are compensations "in excess of 60 million euro" and the punishment of individuals responsible. The suit had been filed already in 2000, but the first hearing was held only last year, after the country's constitutional court had ordered the process to start. Read a more detailed report here.

On H-Soz-u-Kult we can find a review (HTML, PDF) of the volume Urban Life and Culture in Southeastern Europe (2007, Ed. K. Roth and U. Brunnbauer) [=Ethnologia Balkanica 10; cf. also my older posting] featuring the (second half of the) proceedings of the 2005 conference in Belgrade of the same name (at which your blogger also presented a paper, and which he found to be one of the more productive conferences of the last years). The next INASEA conference ("Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe") will take place later this month in Timisoara (programme, abstracts), and preparations for next year's conference in Ankara ("Migration to, from, and in Southeastern Europe: Intercultural Communication, Social Change and Transnational Ties") are underway (call for papers)

BalkanInsight.com has run a feature on one locale on the "new" Serbia-Kosovo border. The teaser: New frontier, cutting remote village in Serbia off from its fields in Kosovo, is condemning it to slow death. Read the full article (yes, part of Balkan Insight's free content section) here.

UC Berkeley will be convening a conference entitled "Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe?" on Sept. 26/27, 2008.  Taking as a point of departure the selection of Istanbul as one of Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2010, the goal of this conference is to reflect on how cities and culture have become key to imagining communities in a globalizing word.
Abstract submissions are now solicited, with May 20 as deadline. More info at the conference website.

 

A "guide" has just been published about the Belgrade shantytown of Gazela. This Roma settlement ("173 households") below a highway bridge in the centre of the city had emerged, illegally, in 1983 as a result of the economic crisis following Tito's death. Social structure and infrastructure were documented in the authors' project which, as we learn, was not entirely uncontroversial. Translations of Lorenz Aggermann, Eduard Freudmann, and Can Gülcü's Beograd-Gazela: Reiseführer in eine Elendssiedlung (Drava, 2007) into English, Serbian, and Romani are to follow. More information (in German) on the project/book can be found on this website; a review by Elena Messner has been published  elsewhere on this site (pdf).