Definitional Dilemmas : Southeastern Europe as « Culture Area » ?

In the popular and scholarly imaginations, the region of the world bearing the label Southeastern Europe (among others) has typically been conceptualized as either a transitional zone, an area of cultural hybridity and cross-fertilization, or as a site of violent, “tectonic” culture shifts. The area thus appears either as a linking bridge or as a dividing fault line between civilizational complexes. This article examines such problematic understandings from the disciplinary viewpoint of the a..