This article is about the post-war governance of Kosovo and the contradiction posed by the focus on multi-ethnicity on the one hand, and the development of a new Kosovar identity that transcends ethnicity on the other. Post-war Kosovo represents a bold experiment by the international community to create a society that adheres to European standards. The international administration has based its post-war reconstruction and governance of Kosovo on standards aimed at EU accession. To this end, since 1999 the international administration in Kosovo has pursued multi-ethnicity as a panacea. Far from creating the conditions conducive to greater inter-ethnic integration, the policies enacted supposedly in the name of multi-ethnicity have resulted in the further entrenchment of ethnic division. At the same time, the international administration has promoted a new Kosovo identity that transcends ethnicity and that fits with European standards. This article questions the international administration's approach in governing post-war Kosovo with the ultimate goal of EU accession. It argues that this approach has failed both in creating a more multi-ethnic society and in creating a new identity that is embraced by the people of Kosovo. This situation in turn raises questions as to whether there is a genuine will from the people of Kosovo to fulfil such standards, and therefore whether the goal of EU integration for Kosovo is a realistic one.

This article aims at considering the story of the Belgrade Staro Sajmište Second World War concentration camp, as it unfolded since October 2007. At that point, it captured national and international headlines, as a range of actors rallied to ban the private use of this memory place for a concert by a British pop group. The article concentrates on patterns of construction of memory(ies), space and transfers of knowledge as well as power as the Staro Sajmište story is ‘uncovered’ to the public in mainstream mass media. The focus of inquiry extends beyond the official realm of memory to media representations as central aspects of contemporary manifestations of collective memory. The article intends to explore the construction of narratives, public discourse and identities that directly impact democratic practice and citizenship in the wake of the radical social and political change that Serbia has experienced in the recent past and during the Western Balkans European Union accession process. It demonstrates that the multiple (hi)stories and fractured mnemonic genealogies of Staro Sajmište produce, and are themselves produced by, the narrative of European participation and integration, in an interplay between different discursive layers, such as the national narrative, the international and European narrative and the local Jewish narrative, as well as practices of spatial reconstruction and consumerism. The article is informed by understandings of the Balkans as a space that is inside and outside Europe in many senses, traversed by flows of people, funding and ideas/imaginaries of Europe and European-ness, concretised in specific projects and the relations that constitute them.

This article aims at portraying the symbolic and material impact of cross-border and entrepreneurial EU-funded projects on the local public sphere of Evros, a Greek region bordering with Turkey. Often construed as ‘European policies’ at the local level, such projects reflect a complex interaction between the ‘European’, the ‘national’ and the ‘local’. In order to unravel the dynamics of such interaction, I focus on the case of local cultural associations. These associations stood as typical bearers of a romantic nationalist discourse; this local enactment of Greek nationalism was also related with specific forms of symbolic capital, through ostensibly ‘disinterested patriotic action’. The introduction of EU-funded projects in the local public sphere challenged such historically constructed practices. At the same time, these projects were mediated by the representatives of the Greek State and were locally appropriated as a reformulation of older national policies and funding channels. The article argues that the implementation of those projects brought about two significant changes in the local public sphere: the dissemination of cross-border policies throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and the growing importance of a new, market-oriented perception of public action, in local cultural associations.

This article explores issues of visual representations and the interaction between fiction and reality in the making of the ‘idea of Europe’. It specifically focuses on David Černý's installation Entropa, exhibited at the headquarters of the Council of the European Union in 2009. The article argues that, despite the use of national stereotypes as the most characteristic representational element of the installation, Entropa does not limit itself to a sardonic critique of a political institution and a ridicule of national identities. Rather, it unveils the uneasiness of facing European identity as fiction. Entropa challenges the boundary between theatricality and reality, because it is exhibited in a political institution. The installation is addressed as a narrative of confusion, where fiction and fact interact in the construction of ideas on Europe, its history, politics, and culture. Therefore, the article concludes, such interaction potentially accommodates a critical standpoint towards the idea of Europe itself.

Modernist theories of development and democratization predicted that secularization would lead to the disappearance of religion. This has not happened. But contemporary democratic states are secular and define religion as a private matter. At the same time, a politics of recognizing religiosity is deeply rooted in the modern state, and it is obvious that intangible values play an important role and have a valid claim to public spaces. On the metaphorical agora, the square that constitutes the middle ground between the cathedral and the parliament, commitment born in the cathedral is transformed into rational arguments that can be presented in parliament. But who governs the square? Do spiritual values need a public defence? Can or should all religious commitments and expressions be transformed into profane arguments? How could public spaces be designed and maintained to promote peaceful mediations between profane, sacred and other principled commitments? By assembling artistic and academic thinkers who do not confine themselves to intellectual analysis, but demand our involvement and our realization that we are part of the processes we are considering, this Focus contributes to a discussion of religiosity and public spaces in post-secular societies.

At http://www.evaingemarsson.se/verk/defensa you will find a medley of scenes from Eve Ingemarsson's performance Defensa – Tesoro II, which was included in the seminar programme.

The creation, roles, and experience of meaningful places in contemporary urban environments can be effectively informed through understandings of pertinent aspects of sacred architecture. To do so, this paper will discuss the mediating roles traditionally performed by sacred architecture and, in particular, its traditional role as an in-between place believed by its creators to establish connections to the understandings they sought or the gods they worshipped. Enduring themes of sacred places will be presented in the context of their communicative capacity and ritual uses, as a means to offer interpretations appropriate to today. The case study of the recently completed Oakland (CA) Cathedral will serve to illustrate contemporary positions and iterations. The conclusion suggests that the sacred place was (and still is), an intermediate zone created in the belief that it had the ability to engage, elucidate and transform, and that a re-introduction and repositioning of the mediating roles performed by the built environment can inform the creation of engaging and meaningful places today.

This article discusses religion in public space and the case study is Muslim minorities in Sweden. The discussion deals with secularisation trends within Muslim communities in Swedish society in view of the notion of counter-secularisation as a fixed and unchanged form of religious expressions in contemporary public life. What happens in Muslim communities as Muslims of various cultural backgrounds and religious orientations meet and interact in a new secular context? The article argues that, similar to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Christian reform movements opened up for a relativisation of faith and thus to a certain extent initiated a secularisation process, a relativisation of faith is at present an ongoing process in Muslim communities in Sweden. Of the three definitions on secularisation, promoted by Jose Casanova, secularisation as ‘differentiation of the secular spheres from religious institutions and norms’, ‘marginalisation of religion to a privatised sphere’, and ‘the decline of religious belief and practices’, Muslim practices in Sweden indicate an adherence to these two first notions of the relation between ‘church and state’. As for the last definition of secularisation; ‘the decline of religious belief and practices’, which has to do with private religious practices, many Muslims would regard themselves as religious without claiming a public role for religion, similar to many Christians in Sweden. Furthermore, many of the traits considered to be ‘religious’, might well be attempts to protect a particular cultural context rather than being signs on increased religion as such.

The notion of ‘sufficiency consciousness’ is a way of life to be adopted towards attitude change in a world that craves for absolutist secularity and religious dogmatism. The paper explores aspects of sufficiency that could promote material development, and as such require a total attitude change and behaviour remodification of public life. It is obvious that performance-driven targets, accelerated growth, investment and prosperity-driven agenda by market forces alone would lead to a skewed understanding of both the notion of sufficiency and material development. Hence, a proposition for value-based sense of material development, ethical buying and consumption have all become survival strategies for civil society groups and organisations to effect change from within. In the Buddhist scheme of thought, two significant core concepts of wisdom and compassion impact on social change and behaviour. Developing non-material values generated by wisdom and compassion are proposed as a lifelong pursuit in understanding human tendencies such as greed, clinging, and craving to amass wealth and excessive indulgence. Such an approach and an analysis evoke a sense of sufficiency alongside appropriate and sustainable material development. The use of certain economic indexes and other technical data in the paper indicate and symbolise the extent to which material progress is emphasised over and above the non-material. A possible development of an index such as Gross National Happiness (GNH) as proposed by the Thai specialists is included as an alternative to the sole-material-progress-based data discourses. Cultivating oneself with compassion juxtaposed by wisdom challenges all to uphold goodness as part of being human. Opposition to such a view of life and a way of life is problematic in the light of the current phenomena of theatrical performance of violence to redress grievances as well as limitless confidence in economic growth and greedy investment plans. It is a value-laden counterpoint to the zero tolerance that can address the larger socio-political issue of the alterity1 that both help to understand what actually sufficiency means in the array material development. Wisdom becomes a guide to action with compassion, while compassion expands the capacity of wisdom to understand the part and the whole. It is in this interplay of value-tracking that one is able to realise the importance of human activity that can evolve checks and balances, which are imperative to measure material development and social progress. ‘Sufficiency consciousness’ and material development are healthy, vibrant and adaptive aspects for civil society groups as well as other institutions to participate critically in ‘religious affairs’ in a ‘secular realm’ with what life offers. The non-material basis of wisdom and compassion offers a wholesome view of ‘sufficiency consciousness’, which is fundamental to material development, economic activity, political governance, institutional arrangements and campaign strategies, for civil society groups to achieve their potential. Wisdom steers compassion while compassion transforms wisdom in those engaged in human activity, which is both about ‘here’ and the ‘not yet’.

Jürgen Habermas’ recent work attempts to find ‘inspiring energy’ in the religious traditions, but without disturbing the rationality and freedoms of enlightenment modernity. Rather, the secular would assimilate the religious like a blood infusion, becoming more vibrant and stronger, but not losing its hard-won advantage. For Habermas, the post-secular problem lies in how best to preserve the secular democratic institutions, and keep them from being ‘violated’ through religiously motivated politics. Habermas criticizes Nicholas Wolterstorff, who would allow the religious to overrun the political, potentially violating vulnerable democratic institutions such as the parliament. Habermas suggests use of an ‘institutional filter’ to protect parliament from violation. Throughout his post-secular writings, he persistently employs Victorian-like innuendo bestowing masculine ‘inspiring energy’, ‘vitality’, and danger onto religion, which runs the risk of ‘violating’ effeminate democratic institutions symbolized by the parliament; thus the prophylactic device, the ‘filter’, which protects her virtue. One is reminded of Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's ‘Wrapped Reichstag’: in contrast to the Bundestag of today, with its glass dome (representing transparency) open to the public, we find in Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's work an enclosed, protective environment, a filter or prophylactic. In this vein, this paper will attempt to tease out from the language, word-choice, metaphors, and discourse of Habermas’ (post)secular dialectics that the religious enters solely on terms set by the secular, and plurality solely on terms set by stability/security.