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Highways of Desire: Cross-Border Shopping in Former Yugoslavia,1960s–1980s
- Central European University Press
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Highways of Desire Cross-Border Shopping in Former Yugoslavia, 1960s–1980s Maja Mikula Ponte Rosso, Via Carducci and Piazza Unità became our new main centers, our highways of desire, our coveted havens! […] Busloads of lucky people clutching fervently onto their precious plastic bags, and their travel bags overflowing with colorful trophies. The socialist workers from Banat and Macedonia, from Bosnia, but also from Dalmatia and Zagreb, along the highway of their brotherhood and unity, all the way to Italy and back.1 Although the violent breakup of socialist Yugoslavia continues to cast a shadow on people’s memories of the former country, some “sunnier” aspects of daily life during socialism seem to resist historical amnesia. One of these is the ritual of shopping abroad, which emerges as an oddly recurrent theme across the gamut of former Yugoslav popular cultural texts, media, and genres. Almost invariably, cross-border shopping is evoked with fondness and nostalgia, and associated with what some remember as the Yugoslav era of peace and plenty. As an exceptionally widespread cultural practice, cross-border shopping involved Yugoslavs of varying ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural , and educational backgrounds. Among the reasonably well-to-do in former Yugoslavia, those who refused to engage in cross-border shopping were very rare. Reflecting the stereotypical representations of gender and generational divide, they were most frequently either males who claimed not to be interested in shopping per se, or older people, presumably unaffected by the consumer frenzy. 1 Šerbedžija (2004, p. 32). The translation is mine. 212 Maja Mikula In this paper, I examine cross-border shopping in former Yugoslavia in the period between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, and its significance in people’s memories of the now defunct socialist state. The aim of my account is to discover how former Yugoslavs make sense of that aspect of their socialist past, and how they relate their individual experiences to the broader social context. Methodology and Concepts Several recent studies testify to the pertinence of cross-border shopping in the cultural makeup of former Yugoslavia. At least three of these2 deal with the scope, significance, and cultural impact of this practice on the social change, identities, and everyday life in the Republic of Slovenia. This is not surprising, considering Slovenia’s geographic position, adjacent to two of the three “Western” capitalist countries sharing borders with the former Yugoslavia.3 The broader focus of my research has led, inevitably, to somewhat different conclusions than those emerging from the previous scholarship on the topic. As will become clear from the discussion that follows, these conclusions pertain not only to the nature of the phenomenon, but also to its relationship to state branding and the ethno-national awareness of the peoples of former Yugoslavia. While drawing on the insights from recent scholarship, my research is pitched at the pan-Yugoslav level and based on qualitative data gathered from respondents living in various former Yugoslav republics. The literary/textual component of my research is based on a review of relevant cultural texts, including novels, memoirs, television series, and pop songs. The ethnographic component is founded on data collected in 2006 and 2007 through 22 in-depth oral-history interviews, some of which had a mini-focus group format; email correspondence with 12 respondents; and a comprehensive online questionnaire designed to yield mostly qualitative data,4 which was completed by 27 respondents . 2 Luthar (2006); Repe (1998); and Švab (2002). 3 Italy and Austria; the third country was Greece. 4 Most questions were open-ended or designed to elicit paragraph-length narrative responses. [54.196.27.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:01 GMT) All my respondents can be described as belonging to the “new class” of the former Yugoslavia,5 either as university-educated professionals or specialized trades people.6 It needs to be emphasized here that, in contrast to Milovan Đilas, who introduced the term “new class” in the 1950s,7 Patrick Patterson uses it to refer to a broader segment of the Yugoslav population, which emerged during the country’s economic boom of the 1960s. Members of this new class, Patterson explains, “busied themselves shopping for, buying, and enjoying all the tangible things and intangible experiences that their newfound positions of economic privilege afforded them”.8 The new class, he argues, was by no means a small, restricted group of the powerful, well-connected , and influential. Quite to the contrary, all this fervid and altogether conspicuous consumption was now, in fact, the domain of...