Identifications and Self-Understandings in Early Modern Southeastern Europe

This paper presents the approach assumed by the authors of this volume, drawing on the various insights of social sciences and humanities. The most important characteristic of the approach is moving beyond the term identity and using more nuanced concepts such as identification, as well as commonality and community when referring to differing levels of cohesiveness and solidarity. This allows researchers to count in the processual quality of how people organised their social worlds. Perceptions of the existence of commonalities and communities take place on specific occasions and in specific contexts. On these occasions, certain categories (such as language, religion, place of residence, or any shared category deemed important in one context) and relational networks (family, neighbourhood, any kind of situational connections) served as the grounds for creating groupness. This approach allows the inclusion of both stability and change, while stressing the need to examine both rather than making uncorroborated conclusions. Finally, it presents major approaches to ethnicity and nationalism as the most important collective identifications today and critically assess their advantages and flaws then studying early modern period.