Now follows the abstract (cf. Balkan Studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) of Tatjana Marković (Graz/Belgrade): Balkan Studies and Music Historiography. (Self-)Representation between Nationalist Myths and Europeanisation

Balkan Studies in music historiography are mainly determined by conservative understanding that Balkan culture is still of predominantly peasant character. Consequently, presentation of the Balkan music/s is based much more on insight in traditional than in art music, esp. contemporary, or popular music and, as such, it is present in the framework of positivistic ethnomusicological writings, in the first place. Recent musicological contributions to Balkan Studies (meaning studies of Balkan, West Balkan, southeast European music) show a new, growing interest in the field, signified by two main policies: on the one hand, there are writings of the guardians of nationalist myths, who construct the concept of music history in accordance with their frozen (medieval) exclusive image of national identity and, on the other, writings of the pro-European orientated scholars, who stress the Balkans’ close connections to Western Europe. The intermingling and separation of these two approaches, their different ideological and methodological outcomes, as well as possible ways of future research, will be discussed.

Here follows the abstracts (cf. Balkan Studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) of Christian Marchetti (Tübingen): 19th-century Austrian Ethnography’s Discovery of the Proximate Other and its Legacy Today

The dichotomy between the exploration of the distant colonial primitive other and the discovery of the peasant as the nation’s »other within« provide a central divide in the historiography of the institutionalization of the anthropological sciences. In this ambivalent process Austrian ethnography was a borderline case. For ethnographic travellers as for aspiring scholars of all anthropological disciplines the proximate Balkans were a productive field of research. As the empire projected its powers into the same space, scientific "discovery" and military conquest often went hand in hand.