Българинът в криза – европеец или балканец? Аспекти на колективната идентичност
The Bulgarian in Crisis – A European or an Inhabitant of the Balkans? Aspects of the Collective Identity

Summary/Abstract: On the basis of field research material, collected in Sofia, the article discusses different aspects of the Bulgarian people’s collective identity within the context of the country’s future joining the EU. The main circles of identity have been outlined: Bulgarian, Balkan and European. The stand has been upheld that they do not contradict each other; they rather overlap in the mass consciousness. That is to say the awareness of belonging to the Balkans of the Bulgarians is not interpreted as the extreme opposite of their “European” identity; it is rather assumed to be cultural specificity without the strongly negative connotation attached to “the Balkan”, typical of the Western discourse. Special attention has been devoted to the manifestation of the Bulgarians’ European identity, which is determined as ambivalent and contradictory both because of the clear differences in the living standards and because of the awareness of a certain set of cultural differences. The collective self-portrait of present-day Bulgarians has been outlined as a set of positive and negative features, which they ascribe to themselves and consider to be typical of the community.

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