Populism, Territories, Name Disputes, and HyperReality

Auteur

By Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis

Texte du rabat

In Populism, Territories, Name Disputes, and Hyperreality: Greek Nationalism and the Macedonian Case, Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis examines how and why societal actors may use different names to refer to the same territory. Karyotakis demonstrates the enormous symbolic power that the names of places can hold through a study of the Macedonian name dispute (MND), arguing that territorial names can be symbolic and crucial for constructing nation-states through imbued influential meanings affecting citizens' hearts and minds. These symbolic name disputes (SNDs), he posits, offer societal elites the opportunity to further their own personal ambitions, which can include winning electoral power and spreading hatred against non-supporters. Karyotakis then delineates how some disputes have maintained a seemingly improved version of reality that strongly attaches the conflict to a dogmatized dominant narrative which exploits the nationalistic ideas of the nation-state and blurs territorial borders (hyperreal symbolic name disputes), while other disputes are firmly attached to actual territorial claims that arise from a disagreement over control of a well-defined physical territory (referential symbolic name disputes). Pointing to several persistent territorial name disputes - such as the Arabian/Persian Gulf, Kurdistan, the Kuril Islands/Northern Territories, Macedonia, Navasa Island/La Navase, and Western Sahara, among others - this book provides a model for a novel categorization that broadens our understanding of these conflicts.

Contenu

Chapter 1: The Influence of Territorial Names and the Symbolic Name Disputes (SNDs)

Chapter 2: The Macedonian Name Dispute (MND): Electoral Power, Populism, and the Prespes Agreement

Chapter 3: Greece's Political Actors and the Perceived Power of the MND

Chapter 4: The Use of the MND on Facebook in the mayoral elections of 2019 in Thessaloniki

Chapter 5: Towards Despotisms or Time for Brave Changes?