Rethinking Class in Socialist Yugoslavia: Labor, Body, and Moral Economy

Abstract

In this chapter, Petrovic and Hofman reflect upon class identities in socialist Yugoslavia from the perspective of cultural representations and moral and affective economies among different social groups. Choosing two iconic figures—a (male) miner and a (female) kafana singer—they discuss the different, simultaneously conflicting and similar positions that these two figures occupy in Yugoslavia’s collective social imagination. The miner was the central figure in the ideology of Yugoslav socialism, but in actuality, existential, labor, and economic conditions make miners rather marginal social subjects. Unlike them, kafana singers were morally marginalized, while economically often able to transcend their marginal position, particularly in late socialism, with the rise of consumer, mass media, and celebrity culture. Surprising similarities and significant differences emerge if these two iconic figures are observed through the lenses of class (self-) perception. Focusing on cultural production and representation (in the media, film, and photography), the authors point to the necessity of thinking about class identities as fluid, ambiguous, and largely defined by the needs and imagination of those who (in capitalism) are usually labeled “middle class.” Looking at class dynamics from such a perspective helps de-essentialize Yugoslav socialism, as it reveals socialist Yugoslavia to be not so different from capitalist societies in the second half of the twentieth century. Even more importantly, this perspective exposes class relations and cultural production that both constitute and reflect these relations as complex, dynamic, and irreducible to the dialogue with “the socialist regime.”