What does Balkanization mean?

[virgoan]

a aoa. plz guide me. Wht Balkanization means?

[nafees khattak]

SALAM,
Balkanization mean to divide country or region into smaller pieces which are unfriendly or aggressive towards each other.

[Nek Muhammad]

Originally Posted by virgoan

Wht Balkanization means?

Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a pejorative geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other.
The term has arisen from the conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. While what is now termed Balkanization has occurred throughout history, the term originally described the creation of smaller, ethnically diverse states following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

s:Wikepedia

[Nazik]

Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a pejorative geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other.

The term has arisen from the conflicts in the 20th century Balkans. While what is now termed Balkanization has occurred throughout history, the term originally described the creation of smaller, ethnically diverse states following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

The term is also used to describe other forms of disintegration, including, for instance, the subdivision of the Internet into separate enclaves, the division of subfields and the creation of new fields from sociology, and the breakdown of cooperative arrangements due to the rise of independent competitive entities engaged in "beggar thy neighbour" bidding wars.

Balkanization is sometimes used to refer to the divergence over time of programming languages and data file formats (particularly XML). The term has been used in American urban planning to describe the process of creating gated communities.

There are also attempts to use the term balkanization in a positive way equating it with the need for sustenance of a group or society. Current research on the positive aspects of Balkanization is carried out by Srđan Jovanović Weiss with Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College.

In January 2007, regarding a rise in support for Scottish independence, Gordon Brown talked of a "Balkanisation of Britain".

[unsolved_Mystery]

Originally Posted by virgoan

a aoa. plz guide me. Wht Balkanization means?

After reading the article given below, u must visit the following link as well which is the actual source of the artcle:
http://www.hudin.com/blog/lets_stop_...balkanization/

A word that is oft tossed around freely is Balkanization. In its truest form, it refers to the breakup of the country that was formerly known as Yugoslavia. In its most idiotic form, it is used to refer to collection of smaller items that separate from a larger one. I have a crazy idea: stop using this word.

As you can see from the Wikipedia article that I linked to, there isn't really any history given as to how the word came about. Obviously it came in to use as former Yugoslavia started to fall apart, but there isn't any mention as to who was the first person to coin it in to the common vernacular. At this point, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that it's an offensive word. Why people can't simply say, "breakup", "collapse", or "separation" is the same reason that we use French words for wine varietals, in that one believes one has the air of being educated if one is to use this bigger, fancier word.

Do any of you who use this word think of the people who actually live in this region of the Western Balkans and what this means to them? It would be like saying every time you serve a bad meal that it's suffered "Britization". No one wants that and it's an unfair association to a region that never asked for the word to be used in the first place. And I pick on the British in this example as I suspect them of starting common use of the word, such as in this article on the BBC that's actually about Africa. It's just one of many.

Beyond the offense of the word, there is just the complete blindness to history. Yugoslavia was actually comprised of various states that had been independent at various points throughout history. So, Yugoslavia was an artificial entity that was bound to separate just like countless other larger countries that have broken up over the centuries. Of course we don't say USSRization, Czechoslovakization, British Empirization, or even Austro-Hungarization. No, we say Balkanization and we say it too much. It's a word we need to lose and just revert back to the normal words I mentioned before. Saying Grenache instead of Garnacha may sound "fancier" to some, but saying, Balkanization just shows that you have no true grasp of what you're talking about, leaving you to fumble for large words to attempt to cover that fact up.