Highways, roadblocks and empires

Abstract

'Building the Balkans' requires the construction of infrastructures, especially highways. In this paper, I look at the construction and obstruction of highway systems in the Balkans as concrete manifestations of metaphors of incorporation and separation. While the infrastructure is mainly tangible, the roadblocks, largely due to ideological positions, are often intangible but very real, and are created as much by the European Union and the US as by the peoples of the Balkans themselves. The basic argument is that infrastructures connect people better than ideologies do, and that putting 'values' before more practical linkages (which both the EU and the US are doing) hinders the establishment of normal links between the Balkans peoples. Finally, I add a few words of anticipatory nostalgia for Balkans diversity that may well be threatened by the region's incorporation into the unifying structures, and ideologies, of the European Union.

Keywords

• Balkans
• infrastructure
• highways
• roadblocks
• ideologies