perceptions), affective (e.g. feelings, evaluations) and behavioural (e.g. intended actions) components of attitudes. In contrast to the previously dominant focus on cognitive processes, much of the recent contact literature emphasises the importance of affective processes in intergroup relationships and tends to be far more optimistic regarding the potential for positive contact experiences to generalise. The roles of affect and motivation have thus gained belated attention in research of prejudice and intergroup relations, exploring the functions of affective ties with out-group members (e.g. feelings of comfort and liking). Friendship is the most important kind, as one might expect, although studies have shown that friends of a friend can also have an effect.
For research specialists, When Groups Meet not only serves as a concise sourcebook for research and theory on intergroup contact, it also provides the entire 515-item bibliography from the meta-analysis. A word of caution, nevertheless, to those less familiar with quantitative methodologies; this is a book that will be more appreciated by readers with at least some knowledge of statistics. Yet the clear structure and accessible writing style should appeal to students of psychology and other social sciences, and more widely provide answers for all those interested in the dynamics of inter-group contact.
Damjan MANDELC, Ana JEŠE Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Ksenija Vidmar Horvat Zemljevidi vmesnosti: Eseji o evropski kulturi in identiteti po koncu hladne vojne
Založba Sophia, Ljubljana 2009, pp. 273 (ISBN: 978-961-6768-10-8)
The book Zemljevidi vmesnosti (The Maps of In-betweenness) by Ksenija Vidmar Horvat is a collection of essays dealing with questions of European culture and identity from a post-socialist and post-Cold War perspective. Drawing on an array of primary sources, including journals and memoirs, the author	1533
develops her argument about European identity through the spectrum of theories of nationalism. As she puts it, conflicts and tensions that arise from the European project are predominantly consequences of conceptualising the policy of integration, which in its "identity core" is a nationalistic one.
Researching media and media memory helps to combine theoretically cultural, media and memory studies with cultural theory and theory of nationalism. For this purpose, the book is composed of theoretical chapters and selected case studies. The study of European identity is placed in the theoretical field of post-socialist (cultural) studies. The position of transitional, post-socialist Slovenia can assist in the rethinking of European perspectives.
In this carefully researched study, Vidmar Horvat argues and demonstrates that if the European project wants to address the complexity of the social and cultural reality of the present time then, first and foremost, it has to deal with its own nationalism. The author develops her argument by highlighting the need to find new ways to detect the collective memory and to commemorate history. Europe is a travelling discursive formation, with its meaning changing with different geographical and social positions, gender, ethnic and generation belongings, with memories of Europe from the past and of today.
In the first, theoretical part of the book, by building on the critique of 1534	Anthony Smith's and Habermasian
theories, exploring the construction of modern identity, challenging the selected Eurobarometer surveys, discussing the consumerism of European identity, European borders and the Schengen borders in particular, and occasionally entering her own biography as a European, Vidmar Horvat leads the reader into thematic sections, testing their (self-explanatory) positions of Europeanism. Melting solid identities into flexible, temporary contingency zones of identification has emancipating consequences of imagining Europe, she argues. While challenging the European politics fostering to form the idea of European identity and culture, Vidmar Horvat calls for thinking about the perception of Europe as a hybrid, a multicultural identity formation, also built up on popular resistances, in-be-
tweenness and counter-identities of official narrations of nations. In this sense, the author convincingly defends the need to explore the cultural specifics of Eastern and Central European experiences, bringing to light imperial legacies as a rich source for researching transculturalism, hybridi-ty and multiculturalism.
In the second part of the book the author tests the theories on case studies. Vidmar Horvat thoroughly and convincingly discusses (European) Islam and the possibilities of cosmopolitanism in Europe; on one hand, Islam was and has been perceived as the Other throughout the history of Europe, on the other hand, Islam has been part of the European identity for a long time. One of the most significant effects that has been alienating Islam from the West is associating Islam with global terrorism. The case study of media reporting about the unrest in Parisian suburbs in 2005 shows that European and Slovenian media represented Islam as the Other, a threat to European identity and greatly problematised it. This shows how EU policies of mul-ticulturalism have not achieved the set goals. Moreover, some recent European Union cultural policies reveal a wish to rewrite history and identify the European continent with Christianity and even erase the contribution of Islamic cultures to Europe's cultural diversity and richness. Further, the majority of the media portrayed the young protesters as angry young Muslim men who threaten European society. The role of violence was
further emphasised by visual representations. Vidmar Horvat critically notes that the media did not connect the European governments and their socioeconomic and political involvement with these incidents of unrest. On one hand, TV news had the tendency to exaggeratedly Islamise the protesters yet, on the other, the print media excluded the construction of Islamic identity from its research. The author adds that this prevents further possibilities arising from a more complex insight into the question of multiculturalism, which would go beyond generalisations about peaceful co-habitation and tolerant co-existence and would think about multiculturalism as an important system of social justice.
The European Union has also been creating a new Other with its external borders, the so-called the Schengen Border Code. The author warns that although the old borders are disappearing, new ones are emerging constantly. She also analyses reporting in the Slovenian media on Slovenia's entry to the Schengen Area and relocating the Schengen border on its southern border with Croatia. The Berlin Wall was re-erected in other parts of Europe and with a thorough analysis of the media reporting Vidmar Horvat defines four main topics within which a new spatial conscience of "borderness" has evolved: a) the strengthening of external borders; b) the relocation of geographies of division; c) flexible internal borders; and d) the conflict of an invisible border.
In the chapter on Hapsburg Empress Sisi, the author touches on a historical discourse and female subject. The author analyses the figure of Empress Sisi from various angles and does not try to establish the correct one; instead, she tries to understand the complexity of her character and her contribution to the Hapsburg monarchy and European legacy. While a fatherly figure, Franz Joseph in this case, acted on the periphery to strengthen the centre, the female nomad, Empress Sisi, persisted on the margins, where she destabilised the centre. This chapter also analyses Slovenian media and the reporting on Sisi's death at the end of the 19th century and shows that Slovenians perceived the Austro-Hungarian Empire as	1535 their homeland and the Queen's death also as a tragedy for Slovenians. The author tries to show that the European Union could learn from lessons from the past, such as the Haps-burg Empire, a multicultural political system where national identity was not always put ahead of the Empire.
The book concludes with geographies of cosmopolitism. Vidmar Horvat proposes that in this globalised world where the European Union still favours association on the basis of the national model, but is witnessing the arrival of newcomers from different environments, which willingly or unwillingly contribute to shaping the European identity, with a new model of theoretical thinking being necessary to overcome perceptions of national and supranational identities that have been shaped by modernisati-
on. This does not mean that the 19th century model of national identities should be nullified. However, by researching the untold stories a process of the pluralisation of memory can be launched. This process is a necessary condition for breaking through the fences of imagined communities and reformulating the relation between territory and identity, which will give more flexibility when it comes to defining our belongings.
As Vidmar Horvat acknowledges in the Conclusion, European identity does not exist, European cultural politics are soaked in specific European nationalism, chauvinism and exclusion when it seems that European institutions speak in the most general 1536	terms. Instead of relying on its own
historical multiculturalism and hybri-dity, calling attention to arbitrary selected legacies and "roots", Europe is closing access to symbolic belonging and stopping the processes of the democratisation of space on its borders and inside Europe. We should break this cycle of seeing EU identity by introducing the concept of "in-betweenness" into it (a term used in postcolonial theory to describe the position of immigrants), emphasising its openness and fluidity instead of its essentialisation. A switch in imagining European identity is a theoretical and social need; it is, as the author claims, a conceptual basis for building social cohesion, solidarity and the ethics of coexistence in the changed conditions of European integration and global flows.
As long as it is promoted and im-
plemented from the top down, and exclusively draws and emphasises Judeo-Christian "heritage", ancient Greek democracy and Roman law, the European project will never reach out to all Europeans. European identity will never be among the primary identifications for Europeans if millions of European Roma, immigrants, peoples of the Balkans, and European Muslims are excluded. Europe must learn from best multicultural practices and some good examples of peaceful coexistence in past multinational and multiethnic "empires" like the Hapsburg, Ottoman and, conditionally, Yugoslav empire. Only then will Europe breathe with both of its lungs, the Eastern, the Western, and everything in between.
Raffaella BIANCHI Zirve University
Vlado Kotnik
Opera, Power and Ideology: Anthropological Study of a National Art in Slovenia
Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien 2011, pp. 210, 54.95 (ISBN 978-3-631-59628-9)
Opera, Power and Ideology by Vlado Kotnik represents a courageous methodological suggestion, advocating an anthropological approach for researching the academic field of opera studies, which is still dominated by musicology. The book