Balkanology: A Theoretical Contribution to the Understanding of the Role of Culinary Otherness in European Culture, or Why are the Balkans so hated even though they have such great food?

The paper presents, firstly, how the ideological mechanism of inward reproductive spatial distribution works in the European space, whose structural consequences are always two opposite cases of identification: “we Europeans” and “we Other Europeans”; and secondly, to illustrate this distribution through the paradoxical case of the acceptance of the Others’ food culture and the rejection of their “national Otherness”.
KEY WORDS: food, culinary, culture, enjoyment, national identity, ideology, the Balkans, EU, Slovenia