From Private Homeland to Ideological Ties: The Aromanians — A People Who Don’t Need a State

This article is devoted to the contemporary process of the ethnic mobilizing of stateless European peoples. The Aromanians, who live in all the countries of the Balkan peninsula but have never experienced lasting statehood, are an example. Currently, members of the young Aromanian intelligentsia are creating a transnational, supra-state community by evoking old symbols and new myths: the cult of symbolic places, historic events, figures, family micro-histories (genealogies), and a common language and values. Access to modern means of communication plays an important role in the process. In the author’s opinion, a modern transnational people is emerging from the politically unformed — but culturally specific — Romance-language community of the Balkans. The group could be considered a “recovered community,” which is based on an ideological construction utilizing carefully selected elements of common history and culture