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Actors, interactions, authorities, limits - Discovering the Web cartography of a ‘Macedonian diaspora’ field

Kristina Balalovska will present her work at the médialab's seminar

Event, Research Seminar

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Salle du médialab, 13 rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris

Summary

While the 20th century saw the emergence of a Macedonian nation and the establishment of an internationally recognized Macedonian state, in the 21st century ‘Macedonia’ remains a focus of struggle not only in today’s Republic of Macedonia, but also abroad, and not least among émigré communities. Our main focus being the construction of ‘diaspora’ in the context of the interactions between the sending state and émigré actors and their national, state and identity constructions, I have sought to analyze an existent ‘Macedonian diaspora’ field, its main actors, interactions, authorities and delimitations. I have done so through the establishment and analysis of a web cartography elaborated on the basis of these actors’ websites which provides a snapshot of their mutual linkages at a particular moment in time.

What and were is ‘Macedonian diaspora’? Who constitutes it and how? One way of tracing the traces of group formation is through quali-quantitative methods that allow the creation of a cartography, mapping the participations (or not), relations (or not) of actors and the relative intensity thereof, as well as the actors’ relative authorities. In Actor-Network Theory terms, the cartography allows establishing both a global panorama about Macedonian ‘diaspora’ group formation and its processes, as well as an oligoptica about specific actors’ localizations and connections. And in terms of a Bourdieusian field, it allows seeing the relative positions and thus constituted authorities of actors in a ‘Macedonian diaspora’ field. The cartography has thus allowed me to confirm or refute hypotheses about the interactions and relative positioning of the different actors in the process of construction of ‘Macedonian diaspora’. Importantly, it has allowed me to show that ‘diaspora’-related processes are more democratic than the literature usually admits, with the active participation and positioning as authorities not only by government actors of the home state, but also other actors, including political parties, émigré and minority associations, media, religious institutions or international organizations. As these are based not only in the home state but also in neighbouring countries and overseas, the cartography also leads to questioning the centrality of a referent home state in diaspora constructions. There is thus a need to open up ‘diaspora’ constitution processes beyond simplified home state-émigré relations and approach them as being complex, or an assemblage of multiple processes that move in all directions and that need to be traced and re-assembled, looking at how they mediate, or transform, translate, distort and modify ‘diaspora’. However, the cartography does not allow analyzing what goes on across the interaction channels between the actors. Thus, if one is to analyze national, state and identity constructions in the relations between ‘diaspora’ actors, the following questions remain unanswered: How is identity understood and what are the specific struggles around it? How is ‘diaspora’ understood and used in such a context? What concepts or policies are associated with ‘diaspora’ and specifically by the different actors? How do the ‘diaspora’ actors behave with each other not only in terms of their interactions, but the quality of such interactions? And not the least, what are the stakes that lie in the middle of the actor interactions?