Cultural intimacy and subversive disorder: The politics of romance in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the example of intimate relations between ethnic Albanian men and ethnic Macedonian women in the Republic of Macedonia, I explore the utility of Michael Herzfeld's invaluable insights into the interconnections among state power, cultural intimacy, and subversive disorder in states where different groups compete for state power. In these states, the absence of conditions that are conducive to the production of cultural intimacy points to the articulation of the state with socially constructed and embedded understandings of what might count as just, proper, and legitimate official response to violations of moral canon.