Discourses and Practices of the In-Between

The project is an interdisciplinary, transnational cooperation project, involving cultural anthropologists and historians from Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Koper. It aims at surveying and analysing the "in-between" in the Alps-Adriatic Region from 1815 to 1914 in terms of the economic, cultural and social practices as well as language practices of the people living in the three cities of Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Trieste at that time. There were manifold cultural, economic and political-administrative relations between these cities. The free trade harbour of Trieste was a common point of reference for Klagenfurt and Ljubljana. Klagenfurt was an important hub for the transport of people and goods from the northern territories to Carniola (Ljubljana) and Trieste. All three cities underwent a process of nationalisation towards the end of the 19th century. After the First World War, Klagenfurt became part of Austria, the state that followed on from the Monarchy. Ljubljana was assigned to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Trieste to Italy. The inevitable formation of nation states is currently the dominant narrative of the history of the Alps-Adriatic region. In contrast, the project is based on the assumption that the process of the formation of nation states was not clear-cut. It assumes proceeds on the assumption that the affiliation to the respective nations was also characterised by an "in-between", sometimes even by an indifference - referred to as "national indifference". The terms "in-between" and "national indifference" refer to different dimensions of everyday and working life, which cannot solely be explained by an affiliation to nation states (e.g. gender, language, class, religion). They manifest, for example, in the use of several languages, in transnational trade relations, in joint leisure pursuits in associations and in family relations across national borders. The objective of the project is to render these developments comprehensible and to tell a "new history" of the Alps-Adriatic region, which has so far been presented mainly as a history of nationalisation, characteristic of Central Europe. By engaging with "national indifference", the project also aims to contribute to a key concept in historical research and the social sciences. Taking the three cities of Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Trieste as examples, the project explores the forms of the "in-between" which can be found: (1) in discourses articulated in contemporary ethnographies, (2) in practices to be found in associations and institutions, marked by their cultural, social, religious and economic relations and (3) on the basis of unpublished diaries, letters or autobiographies of persons living at the time.