Social Inequalities and the Study of Yugoslavia’s Dissolution

Archer, Rory

doi:10.4324/9781315576039-10

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Their efforts dovetail with those of social and cultural historians, who have sought to render more complex scholarly understandings of actually existing Yugoslav socialism. This work examines the realities and myths of worker self‐management (see Archer and Musić 2017; Calori and Jurkat 2018; Cvek 2017); tensions within socialist‐era redistributive politics (see Archer 2014); and the rise of nationalism among the Yugoslavian working class (Musić 2013). In addition to becoming a site of scholarly interest, (post‐)socialist industrialism has also emerged as a new object of popular nostalgia (see Petrović 2013, 2017).…”

Section: Violences Of Privatizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When All That Is Solid Does Not Melt into Air: Labor, Politics and Materiality in a Bosnian Detergent Factory

Kurtović

2020

PoLAR

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Can futures be assembled out of ruins? This article engages this question through an ethnographic account of a workers' struggle in northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina to restart production in a bankrupted factory almost destroyed by privatization. From 2011 through 2015, workers of Dita organized to challenge liquidation of the factory assets. Their struggle resulted in an unprecedented victory when production was restarted in 2015 and the factory reprivatized in 2017. Workers had to carry out their struggle amidst two opposing pulls: the need to draw attention to the processes of destruction that formed part of postwar privatization, and to simultaneously argue for the factory's continued value and viability. The analysis explores the openings and risks created by the ongoing anthropological debates on the centrality of matter-and especially ruins-to social life at large. It argues that where we locate potential and how we name embattled matter is not merely a theoretical but also a political question. [materiality, postsocialism, labor politics, Bosnia-Herzegovina, ruination] "Can futures be assembled out of ruins?" I asked myself that question as I followed Minka (Emina) Busuladžić, the leader of the workers of the occupied Bosnian detergent factory, Dita, located on the outskirts of the city of Tuzla, on an impromptu tour of the industrial park. 1 It was May 2015, and this was my very first visit to the factory, planned in concert with an important workers' assembly. That morning, Dita's workers were bracing for the arrival of the new court-appointed bankruptcy manager, who was to take charge of this once socialist and socially-owned, 2 but now privatized, factory. Ironically, Dita's road to bankruptcy originated in this process of privatization, rather than the devastating destruction that accompanied the Bosnian war (1992 to 1995). However, the threat of liquidation also transformed Dita into the epicenter of a burgeoning new workers' movement, significant not only in the postindustrial northeast but in all of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Arsenijević 2014; Busuladžić 2014; Kurtović 2015). Minka, the acclaimed leader of Dita's workers, is an imposing and spirited presence that provokes reverence even among those who disagree with her positions and strategies. Born in 1956, she has been employed at the factory all her adult life. She arrived as a wide-eyed graduate of Mješovita srednja hemijska škola, Tuzla, the trade-oriented state high school that produced the technical staff for Tuzla's famed-and environmentally infamous-chemical and mining industries. Despite her heart troubles and diabetes, she shepherded Dita's workers through a long struggle to save their factory from being cannibalized by its postwar owners. This fight, which lasted from 2013 to 2017, took many forms, including barricades, strikes, encampments, and occupations. In the latter half of 2015, workers turned to self-initiated production to prove Dita's continued worth and viability. Such unprecedented efforts at small-scale manufacture continued for n...

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Section: Violences Of Privatizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When All That Is Solid Does Not Melt into Air: Labor, Politics and Materiality in a Bosnian Detergent Factory

Kurtović

2020

PoLAR

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“…The state controlled and driven economy aimed at full employment, which meant that large industrial complexes employed thousands of citizens (Petak, 2005). Although ‘the prized position of the working class and notions of social equality represented pivotal tropes in Yugoslav socialism and served to legitimise the state project’, inequalities obviously existed, especially in rural areas (Archer, 2014: 135).…”

Section: Poverty In Serbiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourses of poverty across genres: Competing representations of the poor in the transitional context of Serbia

Kleut

Drašković

2020

Discourse & Society

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This article examines representations of the poor across three genres – the government’s Bulletin on Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction, online news and online user comments – during the period that immediately followed the expiration of the first Serbian Poverty Reduction Strategy (2010–2012). The results show differences in the actors’ representation, and in attribution of causal and treatment responsibility. The Bulletin is characterised by the discourse of social inclusion, activation and responsibilisation of the poor. This discourse does not reach the news, which portrays the poor as passive beneficiaries of the government actions, as individuals in extreme poverty, and as the agentic working poor protesting for wages. In the online user comments, poverty is articulated as the personal experience of the commenters. The news discourse of state responsibility is echoed in the comments sections and further recontextualised into the discourse of political responsibility.

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“…During the period of transformation within the SEE, in addition to the influence of international organisations, the legacies, local parties, existing socio‐economic structures, skills, ethnicity, gender and other agencies and structures have also played a role (e.g., Deacon & Stubbs, ; Inglot, ; Stambolieva, ). Recent research on ex‐Yugoslavia has pointed to the significance of self‐management's legacy of stratification between the bureaucratic class and the rest of society, and between the urban and rural populations (Archer, ; Archer, Duda, & Stubbs, ; Ströhle, ). This legacy dimension is significant since, as Power Resource Theory (PRT) emphasises, political parties, as central mobilising actors in democratic conflicts, have themselves originated from social stratification throughout history (Korpi, ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kosovo's social policy during self‐management, UNMIK and independence: Persisting high inequality and social exclusion

Mustafa

2019

Int J Soc Welfare

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This study examined: (i) Kosovo's social policy's poverty and inequality outcomes in recent history, namely during Yugoslav self‐management socialism (1952–1989), the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) (1999–2008) and independence (2008 onwards), and (ii) the impact of local politics in the more recent trajectory of social policy. The study shows that the poverty rate after the war (1999) is significantly lower than it was during socialism, but that there is persistent high and deepening Gini inequality and social exclusion. Transfers and taxes of the residual‐liberal policy have reduced more pretransfer–pretax inequality, and especially poverty, compared with self‐management's insurance‐dominated socialism, but their effectiveness is declining due to the policy's underlying long‐term, pro‐market logic and its increasing particularism with respect to short‐term transfers. The article argues that the main local political cleavages have originated from self‐management socialism's extensive stratification. These cleavages matter in distributive conflicts, and they mattered also during the UNMIK period by easing the pathway for the unprecedented influence international organisations have had on policy formation.

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Social Inequalities and the Study of Yugoslavia’s Dissolution

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

When All That Is Solid Does Not Melt into Air: Labor, Politics and Materiality in a Bosnian Detergent Factory

When All That Is Solid Does Not Melt into Air: Labor, Politics and Materiality in a Bosnian Detergent Factory

Discourses of poverty across genres: Competing representations of the poor in the transitional context of Serbia

Kosovo's social policy during self‐management, UNMIK and independence: Persisting high inequality and social exclusion

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