ABSTRACT
Shaping and reshaping stereotypes including self-stereotypes played a crucial role in the construction of modern nations all over the world. These stereotypes created symbolic frameworks which helped to integrate the different social, ethnocultural, and territorial units that came to form the modern national communities, distinguishing them from neighboring and competing national projects. In Southeastern Europe nation-building ventures that were considered “late-comers” felt a pressing need to legitimize themselves with historical, ethnographical, geographical, anthropological, or even aesthetic and philosophical arguments against the supra-ethnic imperial claims and the partially overlapping claims of their neighbors.
