Student Bloggers
International Politics: Theoretical vs. Applied Knowledge
Date
January 26, 2017
Last night, I went to a meeting for the Tae Kwon Do club at Aberdeen. I learned to do a 180-kick, and how to get out of a wrist grab and a choke. But that’s not what this blog post is about.
At the end when everyone was putting their coats on to go home, I got into a conversation with someone. We did the usual “where are you from-s” and she mentioned she was from Albania. Part of living at the University of Aberdeen is meeting people from all parts of the world, which I love.
One of the few things I know about that part of the world is Kosovo. If you’ll look at the map, you’ll see that Kosovo is a piece of land between Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. As one might figure after looking at the key, both Serbia and Albania had claims to the land of Kosovo in the last 100 years. One of the few things I know about this area is that Kosovo (the population being predominantly of Albanian descent) has formed its own government and considers itself independent of Serbia, the government of which considers Kosovo to be Serbian land. All of this is in the area just north of Greece.
Somewhat foolishly, after I heard “Albania”, I asked “What do you think about Kosovo?”
The answer that I naively expected went something along the lines of “Oh! I’m surprised an American even knows that Kosovo exists! Let me tell you about this interesting thing that relates to my country!” The response I got was quite different. I got a deer-in-headlight look for half a second that felt like half an hour. Then, in a half-worried, half-threatening voice, she asked “Are you Serbian?”
I wasn’t prepared for that. I stuttered out that I was just an American who heard about Kosovo in a history class once. After a skeptical look, she believed me. She then started telling me about how the greedy Serbs didn’t want to give up Kosovo’s natural resources, and started talking about Albanian culture.
I learned a few things from that encounter.
- Don’t be a complete poindexter.
- Think about whether something is controversial before you ask about it.
- Make sure to understand points 1 and 2.
- Seriously. Read over points 1 and 2 again.
- Don’t call an Albanian Slavic.