In School of Europeanness, Dace Dzenovska argues that Europe's political landscape is shaped by a fundamental tension between the need to exclude and the requirement to profess and institutionalize the value of inclusion. Nowhere, Dzenovska writes, is this tension more glaring than in the former Soviet Republics.

Using Latvia as a representative case, School of Europeanness is a historical ethnography of the tolerance work undertaken in that country as part of postsocialist democratization efforts. Dzenovska contends that the collapse of socialism and the resurgence of Latvian nationalism gave this Europe-wide logic new life, simultaneously reproducing and challenging it. Her work makes explicit what is only implied in the 1977 Kraftwerk song, "Europe Endless": hierarchies prevail in European public and political life even as tolerance is touted by politicians and pundits as one of Europe's chief virtues.

School of Europeanness shows how post-Cold War liberalization projects in Latvia contributed to the current crisis of political liberalism in Europe, providing deep ethnographic analysis of the power relations in Latvia and the rest of Europe, and identifying the tension between exclusive polities and inclusive values as foundational of Europe's political landscape.

About the Author

Dace Dzenovska is Associate Professor in the Anthropology of Migration at the University of Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society.

Reviews

Dzenovska employs a deceptively simple, yet illuminating, tool for her study of the well-worn subject matter of the last thirty years of Latvia's political and social relations.... her masterful book belongs on the shelves of academics from many disciplines.

* Slavonic and East European Review *

Dzenovska's critique is worth bearing in mind as increased migration has led to arise in right-wing nativism in Europe and the United States.

* Foreign Affairs *

Dzenovska's ethnographically rich discussions show how nationalism and a liberal form of statism are also intertwined in identifying and disciplining subjects who are not-yet European enough, in the context of a Europeanizing Latvia. The conceptually driven analyses provide larger insights beyond Latvia for anyone working on liberal values, nationalism and the minority question in Europe.

* PoLAR *


Awards
Winner of Best Book on Baltic Studies 2020 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781501711152
Author Dace Dzenovska
Format Paperback
Page Count 276
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 19mm