Abstrakti
The implementation of the EU Green Agenda for the Western Balkans has led to a surge in hydropower projects in the region. These initiatives faced the opposition of peripheral rural communities, resulting in local conflicts that scaled to the regional level with the support of environmental organizations and experts. These conflicts represent a new form of environmental mobilization in the region, engaging local communities marginalized from civil society activism. Through a case study of the regional network “Let’s Defend the Balkan Rivers,” this paper explores the key issues driving mobilization for river protection and the mechanisms that enabled local struggles to scale to the regional level. It employs frame analysis of media content, movement documents, and semi-structured interviews with activists to examine the movement’s cultural repertoires of collective action. It argues that grassroots opposition to hydropower projects has unveiled interconnected issues of environmental threats and democracy. Furthermore, it highlights how a deep emotional attachment to rivers motivated local communities to engage in collective action, fostering solidarity that bridged local rootedness with transnational cooperation. Drawing on environmental sociology, political ecology, and social movement studies, the research aligns with emerging scholarship from post-socialist Eastern Europe, which seeks to situate locally embedded forms of environmentalism within broader academic debates and global trends.
Fjalë kyçe
Referencat
- Berishaj, V. (2021). Decarbonisation of the region – a sustainable and just energy transition. Green Transition and Social (in)Justice, 10, 32–35.
- Bilic, B., & Stubbs, P. (2015). Unsettling “The Urban” in Post-Yugoslav Activisms: Right to the City and Pride Parades in Serbia and Croatia. In K. Jacobsson & S. Saxonberg (Eds.), Urban grassroots movements in Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 119–138). Ashgate Pub.
- Bougarel, X. (1999). Yugoslav Wars: The ‘Revenge of the Countryside’ between Sociological Reality and Nationalist Myth. East European Quarterly, 32(2), 157–175.
- Carmin, J., & Vandeveer, S. D. (2004). Enlarging EU Environments: Central and Eastern Europe from Transition to Accession. Environmental Politics, 13(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010410001685119
- Della Porta, D., & Piazza, G. (2008). Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits: How Protest Creates Communities. Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845458621
- Devine-Wright, P. (2009). Rethinking NIMBYism: The role of place attachment and place identity in explaining place-protective action. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 19(6), 426–441. https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.1004
- Dogmus, O. C., & Nielsen, J. Ø. (2020). The on-paper hydropower boom: A case study of corruption in the hydropower sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ecological Economics, 172, 106630. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106630
- Escobar, A. (2008). Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1198wg2
- Fagan, A., & Buzogany, A. (2022). Beyond Europeanization: Political ecology and environmentalism in Central and Eastern Europe. Environmental Politics, 31(7), 1203–1213. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2022.2147652
- Fagan, A., & Carmin, J. (2011). Green activism in Post-Socialist Europe and the Soviet Union. Routledge.
- Fagan, A., & Ejdus, F. (2022). Lost at the waterfront? Explaining the absence of green organisations in the Don’t let Belgrade D(r)own movement. Environmental Politics, 31(7), 1289–1308. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1720473
- Fagan, A., & Sircar, I. (2015). Europeanization of the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319050
- Gallop, P. (2021). Prospects for independent action in the Western Balkans’ energy transition. Green Transition and Social (in)Justice, 10, 9–13.
- Gordy, E. D. (2000). Turbasi and Rokeri as Windows into Serbia’s Social Divide. Balkanologie, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.4000/balkanologie.774
- Hromadzic, A. (2024). Riverine citizenship: A Bosnian city in love with the river. Central European University Press.
- Hunt, S. A., & Benford, R. A. (2004). Collective Identity, Solidarity, and Commitment. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, & H. Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (pp. 433–457). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470999103.ch19
- Jacobsson, K., & Saxonberg, S. (Eds.). (2013). Beyond NGO-ization: The development of social movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Ashgate.
- Jansen, S. (2005). Who’s afraid of white socks? Towards a critical understanding of post-Yugoslav urban self-perceptions. Ethnologia Balkanica, 09, 151–167.
- Jehlicka, P., & Jacobsson, K. (2021). The importance of recognizing difference: Rethinking Central and East European environmentalism. Political Geography, 87, 102379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102379
- Jerolmack, C., & Walker, E. T. (2018). Please in My Backyard: Quiet Mobilization in Support of Fracking in an Appalachian Community. American Journal of Sociology, 124(2), 479–516. https://doi.org/10.1086/698215
- Kojola, E. (2020). Who Speaks for the Place? Cultural Dynamics of Conflicts Over Hazardous Industrial Development. Sociological Forum, 35(3), 673–695. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12620
- Kovacevic, N. (2021). How to restore social well-being and whether decarbonized energy is possible in the Western Balkans. Green Transition and Social (in)Justice, 10, 36–39.
- Kurtovic, L. (2022, May 18). Riverine Struggles Against Plunder and Dispossession: Water Defenders in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Europe Now Journal. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2022/05/17/riverine-struggles-against-plunder-and-dispossession-water-defenders-in-postwar-bosnia-herzegovina/
- Kurtovic, L., & Hromadzic, A. (2020, March 24). Socialist Greens: On Vernacular Environmentalisms. Society for Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/socialist-greens-on-vernacular-environmentalisms
- Martinez-Alier, J., Temper, L., Del Bene, D., & Scheidel, A. (2016). Is there a global environmental justice movement? The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43(3), 731–755. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1141198
- Massey, D. B. (1994). Space, place, and gender. Univ. of Minnesota Press.
- Milan, C., & Dolenec, D. (2023). Social movements in Southeast Europe: From urban mobilisation to electoral competition. East European Politics, 39(4), 577–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2023.2267991
- Muehlebach, A. K. (2023). A vital frontier: Water insurgencies in Europe. Duke University Press.
- Müller, M. (2020). In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South. Geopolitics, 25(3), 734–755. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2018.1477757
- Pellizzoni, L. (2014). Territorio e movimenti sociali. Continuità, innovazione o integrazione? Poliarchie, 2, 5–33.
- Pesic, J., & Vukelic, J. (2022). Europeanisation from below at the semi-periphery: The movement against small hydropower plants in Serbia. Sociologija, 64(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.2298/SOC2201005P
- Rajkovic, I. (2020). Rivers to the People: Ecopopulist Universality in the Balkan Mountains. Society for Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/rivers-to-the-people-ecopopulist-universality-in-the-balkan-mountains
- Ruiz, J., & Domon, G. (2012). Relationships between rural inhabitants and their landscapes in areas of intensive agricultural use: A case study in Quebec (Canada). Journal of Rural Studies, 28(4), 590–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2012.09.005
- Schlosberg, D., & Collins, L. B. (2014). From environmental to climate justice: Climate change and the discourse of environmental justice. WIREs Climate Change, 5(3), 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.275
- Schwarz, U. (2022). Hydropower Projects on Balkan Rivers – 2022 Update. RiverWatch & EuroNatur.
- Schwarz, U. (2025). Hydropower Projects on Balkan Rivers – 2024 Update (6). RiverWatch & EuroNatur. https://www.legaltoolkit4rivers.eu/1-introduction/
- Snow, D. A. (2013). Case Studies and Social Movements. In D. Della Porta, B. Klandermans, D. McAdam, & D. A. Snow (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (1st ed.). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm022
- Snow, D. A., Vliegenthart, R., & Ketelaars, P. (2019). The framing perspective on social movements: Its conceptual roots and architecture. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, H. Kriesi, & H. J. McCammon (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (2nd ed., pp. 392–410). Wiley-Blackwell.
- Threadgold, S., Farrugia, D., Askland, H., Askew, M., Hanley, J., Sherval, M., & Coffey, J. (2018). Affect, risk and local politics of knowledge: Changing land use in Narrabri, NSW. Environmental Sociology, 4(4), 393–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1463673
- Touquet, H. (2015). Non-ethnic Mobilisation in Deeply Divided Societies, the Case of the Sarajevo Protests. Europe-Asia Studies, 67(3), 388–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2015.1019430
- Velicu, I., & Kaika, M. (2017). Undoing environmental justice: Re-imagining equality in the Rosia Montana anti-mining movement. Geoforum, 84, 305–315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.10.012
Komente
Ende nuk ka komente. Pyetjet dhe vërejtjet për artikullin janë të mirëpritura.