Rapid growth of interest in the research of childhood during the last several decades can be regarded not only as an indicator but also as an important factor in the long-term processes of changes, which have radically transformed history as a scientific discipline. With the growth of the history of childhood as a discipline a series of problems neglected until then has been opened, and along the questions about the new sources and equivalent methods of research. This is especially true for historiography in the South East European countries, where social history and historical anthropology is still marginal. The volume comprises 18 contributions to the topic with authors from all countries of the region, focussing on the 19th and 20th century. Topics like "upbringing of female children in Serbia" or "rural childhoods in mountain regions of Austria and Greece" are as well touched as "children and war" and "children and migration". This is the first volume that provides an international readership with an overall picture on childhood in South Eastern Europe.

Across Eastern Europe and Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, conflict and violence arising out of foreign and civil wars, occupation, revolutions, social and ethnic restructuring and racial persecution caused countless millions of children to be torn from their homes. Displaced Children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953 addresses the powerful and tragic history of child displacement in this region and the efforts of states, international organizations and others to ‘re-place’ uprooted, and often orphaned, children. By analysing the causes, character and course of child displacement, and examining through first-person testimonies the children’s experiences and later memories, the chapters in this volume shed new light on twentieth-century nation-building, social engineering and the emergence of modern concepts and practices of statehood, children’s rights and humanitarianism. Contributors are: Tomas Balkelis, Rachel Faircloth Green, Gabriel Finder, Michael Kaznelson, Aldis Purs, Karl D. Qualls, Elizabeth White, Tara Zahra

More than 20 years of rapid political, economic, social, and cultural change have turned Southeast Europe into a laboratory of transformative processes - processes that have deeply affected the structures of everyday life and that have resulted in a variety of (post-)modern life styles. The contributions by native and foreign researchers to this first of two volumes shed light on the changing practices and patterns of everyday life in Southeast Europe, many of which differ from those in other parts of Europe. The concepts of multiple modernities and post-modernity appear to be highly appropriate for a region in which - under the combined impact of post-socialist transformation, globalization, and EU integration - everyday life is marked by sharp dichotomies and tensions. Understanding these paths to (post-)modernity is relevant for those interested in the Balkans, as well as for those generally interested in processes of socio-cultural change. (Series: Ethnologia Balkanica - Vol. 15)