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Bulgarian national awakening in Europe - The protest movement in Sofia 2013

Hallberg, Delia (2013) Bulgarian national awakening in Europe - The protest movement in Sofia 2013.

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Abstract:The trend in current academic literature on recent protest movements occurring worldwide is to emphasize the global dimension and common grounds movements that occurred after 2011. In this research I first introduce the concept of recognition struggle to the study of protest movements and argue that protesters struggle to freely express their previously misrecognized, marginalized and oppressed identities against national regimes. Second, I argue that the protest movement in Sofia, summer 2013 expresses a distinctively Bulgaria character in comparison to other European protest movements in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Romania and Turkey. The distinctively Bulgarian character expressed during the protest movement in Sofia is manifested in the combination of a pre-modern identity of Bulgarian folklore, myths and traditions with a modern identity with critique of the allegedly oligarchic and corrupt Oresharski cabinet and a European consciousness. With this line of reasoning I discuss in this research three types of struggle for recognition and argue that the protest movement in Portugal, Spain and Greece are primarily engaged in a struggle for social rights against austerity measures and welfare state cuts. Further, I analyze that movements in Bulgaria and Romania are centered on political rights, struggling against as illegitimately regarded national regimes of corruption and despotism whereas protesters in Turkey struggle against what protesters regard as an authoritarian imposition of an Islamist identity by the Turkish regime.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:89 political science
Programme:European Studies BSc (56627)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64052
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