‘You can’t weed out corruption’: Railway workers’ assessments of the state in post-socialist Serbia

Kojanić, Ognjen

doi:10.2298/gei1701047k

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…“If politicians and the government in our country only do things in their own interest, making senseless budgets for projects so that they can fill their own pockets with the STATE's money, I want to oppose them,” wrote one person. Others noted that “the self‐proclaimed government breaks all rules and laws and endangers others' lives to launder money” and that “everything in this country is done chaotically, without a plan and against nature (I'm talking about every government, the previous one, the current one, and unfortunately probably the future one, too).” Ideas about corruption are widespread in Serbia (Kojanić, 2017). As opposed to the corrupt government, people talked about Beljarica as an example of “life” (Rajković, 2023), an “oasis,” and a “centuries old natural treasure” that needed to be preserved.…”

Section: Opposition To the Port Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimations of value in “Belgrade's Amazonia”

Kojanić

2023

Economic Anthropology

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In this article, I analyze the arguments marshaled in favor of and against the project to build a new port on the Danube River in the wetland area popularly referred to as Belgrade's Amazonia. Building on scholarship on ascribing value to infrastructures and the environment, I use the term estimation to highlight ambiguity in the process of ongoing and open‐ended valuation. Estimation denotes a rough determination of value, a process of valuation based on approximation rather than measurement or enumeration. In estimations articulated by disparate social actors in this case, various economic and socioenvironmental values sometimes clashed, sometimes blended with one another. The flexibility in the use of registers of value enabled contradictory outcomes: a coalition was formed to protect Belgrade's Amazonia despite the heterogeneous arguments against the project, and later, the project's critique was co‐opted by the government. Estimations are fundamentally open to opportunistic political uses owing to their malleability, with implications for the politics of valuation with regard to infrastructures and environmental protection more broadly.

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Section: Opposition To the Port Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimations of value in “Belgrade's Amazonia”

Kojanić

2023

Economic Anthropology

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“…A differentiation in life chances exacerbated existing forms of social inequality (Kaneff and Pine 2011; Kideckel 2008; Matza 2018; O'Neill 2017). Many 'ordinary' people felt stuck (Jansen 2015; Simić 2014) while others -politicians, the new rich -were seen moving at their expense (Kojanić 2017;Patico 2005). As economic precarity spread, patterns of relating and expectations from the state were being transformed (Dunn 2004;Morris 2016;Potkonjak and Škokić 2013;Rajković 2018).…”

Section: 'The Dull Compulsion Of Economic Relations'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory from the Peripheries

Kojanić

2020

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

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This article argues for the benefits of a relational approach to understanding centres and peripheries across scales in anthropology, as opposed to an approach based on substantive notions of geographic areas. Based on an extensive literature review, I expose how the salience of the division into Western and Eastern Europe, and, increasingly, into Northern and Southern Europe, obscures the divisions on other scales within and across these divisions. Instead, I argue for thinking relationally about centres and peripheries, highlighting two relevant contributions that the anthropology of postsocialism can make to a European anthropology: one is based on analyses of how places become peripheral, while the other starts from analyses of political-economic changes and their social impacts after the collapse of socialism.

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Micron engagements, macro histories: Machines and the agency of labor in a worker-owned company

Kojanić

2023

History and Anthropology

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‘You can’t weed out corruption’: Railway workers’ assessments of the state in post-socialist Serbia

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Estimations of value in “Belgrade's Amazonia”

Estimations of value in “Belgrade's Amazonia”

Theory from the Peripheries

Micron engagements, macro histories: Machines and the agency of labor in a worker-owned company

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