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Deconstructing the Divided City

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Deconstructing the Divided City University College London Department of Geography DECONSTRUCTING THE DIVIDED CITY IDENTITY, POWER AND SPACE IN SKOPJE Ophélie Véron Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 –STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY – I, Ophélie Véron, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own and has not been submitted, in whole or in part, for any other degree or diploma at any other university. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 –ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – Completing a thesis brings many joys, one of which is to remember the colleagues, friends and family who have helped me and supported me along this journey. I am indebted to my Ph.D. supervisor, Dr. Alan Ingram, for his constant guidance, support, encouragement, motivation and feedback. Although I must admit I sometimes cursed his sharp and critical mind, I could not have asked for a better role model, inspirational and always incredibly patient (even towards my never-ending questions, my poor French habits and my dislike for administrative tasks). This thesis would not have been possible without him. I would also like to show my gratitude to my Ph.D. co-supervisor, Prof. Ger Duijzings, for sharing his expert knowledge of and advice on the Balkans, and for many insightful discussions and suggestions on my field visits and my research methods. I would like to warmly thank Dr. Jennifer Robinson and Dr. Wendy Pullan for having agreed to act as examiners for my viva and for giving me detailed and insightful feedback which greatly improved this thesis. This thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of the École Normale Supérieure Ulm and the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Many thanks to Prof. Georges Prévélakis for his guidance and his help in obtaining funding as an early career researcher. I also would like to thank the institute Sciences-Po Paris, which offered me a position of adjunct lecturer and gave me the opportunity to design and deliver a class on the Balkans for two years. I am grateful to the members of my M.Phil./Ph.D. upgrade panel, Prof. JoAnn McGregor, Dr. Eric Gordy, Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo and Dr. Andrew Harris, for their careful reading, valuable comments and suggestion on my upgrade thesis, with special thanks to Dr. Jason Dittmer who kindly agreed to chair this panel. I wish to thank my undergraduate Geography teacher at Louis-le-Grand, Mme Annette Ciattoni. When I was 16, Geography was my least favourite subject, but I 4 had not met her yet. She passed onto me her passion for Geography and, for her, I left my first love, Philosophy. After a journey of three years with her through the geography of religions, France and Saharan countries, there was no turning back. I own sincere and earnest thankfulness to Dr. Emmanuelle Boulineau, who directed my Sorbonne Master on Bulgaria. She has been a strong and supportive adviser to me throughout my graduate school career and without her guidance and enthusiasm, I would perhaps not have had the courage to embark on this journey. I am also indebted and thankful to Dr. Pierre Sintès, my tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, who encouraged me to conduct research in the Balkans and who warmly welcomed me among the Balkan specialists. I wish to thank also Prof. Marie Vrinat-Nikolov, my teacher of Bulgarian at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris. I was already enamoured with Slavic languages, but she further transmitted me her passion and warmly supported my application to Oxford University. I am grateful to Prof. Judith Pallot, my tutor at Oxford University, for her help in integrating the British university system; to Prof. Keith S. Brown, for his positive feedback on my work at the ASN conference in New York; to Dr. Divna Penčić and Prof. Robert Home, for their valuable assistance in my research on post-earthquake urban planning in Skopje. I would like to express my deep thanks to my friends in Macedonia and co-panelists in New York: Kristina, for her constant help and support during my field visits in Skopje; Misha, for the fruitful discussions we had on Skopje 2014 and urban politics, and his mother, who kindly accepted a video interview; Anastas, for sharing his experience and his views on Macedonian politics and nationalism. My field visits were made enjoyable and fruitful thanks to all my friends in Skopje, Martina, Srdzan, Ajsel, Gago, Xhabir, Nevsija, Hava, Silke, Albert and Giorgia. I wish also to thank my close friends, Baptiste, who patiently listened to all my passionate speeches about the Balkans, and Aude, who never stopped supporting me, even in the difficult moments of the last two years. I would like to thank my family for all their love and support. Thanks to my parents, both researchers, who failed in dissuading me from pursuing academic research but 5 successfully instilled in me their enthusiasm and love of scientific rigour, hard work and Slavic cultures. Thanks to my brothers, Frédéric, who kept his sense of humour when I had lost mine, and Adrien, who has very original ideas on how to put an end to conflicts in the Balkans. Last but not least, I thank Eric, who has been by my side throughout this Ph.D., and whose love and encouragement allowed me to finish this journey. I would like to dedicate this work to my grandmother, Madou, Righteous Among the Nations, who fought all her life to defend her ideals and left us too soon, but who passed on me her determination, her willpower and her strong sense of injustice. 6 –ABSTRACT – This thesis makes two main contributions. Based on fieldwork in Skopje, it first adds an original case study to the literature on urban divisions and draws attention to overlooked cities where processes of division may not be immediately obvious in the urban landscape, but which nonetheless exist. Second, it adds to an emerging line of research that seeks to find new ways to think about urban divisions and reflects on the use of static and dynamic concepts to describe urban processes. Instead of regarding divided cities as ontologically-given and focusing on a few cities elevated to the status of paradigmatic cases, I emphasise the processes that bring a city to division with the concept of dividing city. This thesis critically questions orthodox histories of Skopje as a divided city and the role of elites in fostering the image of division, from the Ottoman city to the socialist city, and post-1991 redevelopment. I explore how ideological and political dynamics and processes affect the lived experience of the city’s inhabitants and, how, in turn, the latter both take part in and resist the construction and division of the city. I show that the city as a lived environment may offer other narratives than that of division, in other words, that alternatives to the divided city do exist. 7 – TABLE OF CONTENTS – Table of figures ................................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1 - Literature Review ...................................................................................................... 35 1.1. What is a Divided City? .......................................................................................................... 37 1.2. The controlled city ................................................................................................................... 58 1.3. The lived and contested city .................................................................................................... 67 Chapter 2 - Methodology ................................................................................................................ 87 2.1. Conceptual design .................................................................................................................... 87 2.2. Research planning and data gathering .................................................................................. 90 2.3. Positionality and Ethics ........................................................................................................... 99 2.4. Data analysis .......................................................................................................................... 101 Chapter 3 - Ottoman Skopje: A Not-So Divided City? ......................................................... 104 3.1. Questioning ‘the Ottoman city’ ............................................................................................ 106 3.2. Skojpe under the Ottoman rule ............................................................................................ 117 3.3. Skopje admist European modernisation ............................................................................. 123 Chapter 4 - The Birth of a Divided City? ................................................................................. 132 4.1. The ambiguity of Westernisation in Skopje ........................................................................ 134 4.2. Building the new socialist city ............................................................................................... 148 4.3. From an ‘Open City’ to a ‘Divided City’? ........................................................................... 162 Chapter 5 - The City from Above .............................................................................................
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