Notes from the Balkans

Green, Sarah F.

doi:10.1515/9781400884353

Cited by 153 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Informants who did their national service on the borders confirmed that border guards during socialism had shoot-to-kill-on-the-spot orders in case they saw an escapee or invader, both considered equally dangerous for the social order. These instructions caused some macabre and at the same time ridiculous incidents when they came into force, such as the execution of people whose backyards were divided by the obscured Albanian-Greek border (see Green 2005 andDalakoglou (2010a) about this ambiguous border).…”

Section: The Roads Of An Immobile Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania

Dalakoglou

2012

Mobilities

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The overarching question of this article is how can we develop a critical understanding of the social place of highways and automobility in the case of a non-capitalist European context such as socialist Albania? Socialism was a period of modernisation for Albania. Part of this modernisation project was the production of a modern built environment, especially infrastructures and urban spaces. Within this context during socialism thousands of miles of new roads were constructed in the country. The remarkably limited use of roads, combined with their systematic building and maintenance, kept this infrastructure's materiality in a relatively good condition for many decades. Since the early 1990s, though, the end of the regime has signified a period of booming mobility and automobility. Postsocialism and the wider context of neoliberalism have been marked by state withdrawal from many of its previous roles, and the maintenance of basic infrastructures has become increasingly dependent on international aid. Nevertheless, the roads are currently being socially reappropriated and reconfigured, as people embrace automobility, which was a very limited practice during socialism. This article explores the kind of socio-material relationships that road construction and the roads themselves generated in socialist Albania and how these are linked to postsocialist spatial practices.

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Section: The Roads Of An Immobile Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania

Dalakoglou

2012

Mobilities

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“…The majority were urban identified, even if their places of origin were smaller towns or rural areas. Political ideology and social class throughout the former Yugoslavia have long been inscribed through geographical metaphors that map levels of civilization and modernity to territory in a process Milica Bakić‐Hayden and Robert Hayden (1992) call “nesting orientalisms.” The internalization of these civilizational tropes and the idea of the Balkans as an exceptional space in divisions of East and West, and traditional and modern, has had a long‐standing and powerful presence in literary, political, and everyday discourse in and about the region (Green 2005; Helms 2008; Rasza and Lindstrom 2004; Todorova 1997).…”

Section: There Are No “Rules”: Normal As Moral Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

On the Road to Normal: Negotiating Agency and State Sovereignty in Postsocialist Serbia

Greenberg

2011

American Anthropologist

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I examine how perceptions of state crisis and moral decay in Serbia (after the breakup of Yugoslavia) impact people's belief that they are no longer normal agents capable of effective action. More specifically, I argue that a shift in Serbia's geopolitical position and changing dynamics at international borders reveal the intimate links between people's self-conception as moral, agentive subjects and the conditions that structure state power. Discourses of normalcy are about the loss (and possible restoration) of a historically specific form of citizen agency that emerged in relationship to a functioning, sovereign, and internationally respected socialist Yugoslav state. I focus on young people's intimate experiences and narratives of everyday life and leisure. In exploring the intersection of forms of state sovereignty and the experience of citizen agency, I illuminate how young Serbian citizens experience changing configurations of state power as enabling conditions for their own moral and agentive capacities. [normal, agency, Serbia, sovereignty, postsocialism]

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“…During the socialist past, it was a road to nowhere; in fact, it never reached the actual border, as the border was a forbidden zone. As Sarah Green (2005) notes in her study of the Greek side of the Albanian–Greek borderlands, the border zone had marked the division between two states officially in a condition of belligerence; it was a no‐human zone. Then, following the postsocialist transition, and the opening of the border, the Kakavijë–Gjirokastër road became one of the most famous and used road sections in Albania, facilitating the massive emigration to Greece that marks the postsocialist transition.…”

Section: Nationalismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The road: An ethnography of the Albanian–Greek cross‐border motorway

Dalakoglou

2010

American Ethnologist

129

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This article is an ethnographic study of a 29‐kilometer stretch of cross‐border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokastër with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross‐border road section as my main ethnographic point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

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Notes from the Balkans

Cited by 153 publications

References 0 publications

‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania

‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania

On the Road to Normal: Negotiating Agency and State Sovereignty in Postsocialist Serbia

The road: An ethnography of the Albanian–Greek cross‐border motorway

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