Papers by Deana Jovanović
Labor History, 2023
The paper explores experiences of temporary labor migration that entailed Yugoslav export of know... more The paper explores experiences of temporary labor migration that entailed Yugoslav export of know-how (highly skilled knowledge and expertise) between 1980 and 1991, a result of industrial collaboration between Mining and Smelting Combine Bor, a state-owned copper-processing ‘giant’ in former Yugoslavia, and the biggest copper company in Iran, National Iranian Copper Industries Company. Based on interviews with individuals engaged in the Yugoslav project, supplemented by analysis of documents and historic newspapers from that period, the paper analyzes everyday practices of managerial bureaucratic improvisations and improvisations at work. The article shows how such improvisations helped overcome excessive and rigid Yugoslav socialist bureaucracy and made Yugoslav entrepreneurial capitalist ventures possible. Moreover, it argues that the export of know-how was constitutive of silent acceptances of reproduction of capitalist relations, which helped consolidate the process of liberalization of the socialist market in the late 1980s. We argue that such temporary labor migration and the often improvised work carried out by the Yugoslav workers cannot be seen as a resistance or alternative to the Western/Northern hegemonies. Rather, we argue that such practices were facilitators of the capitalist ventures at semi-peripheries.
Anthropology News , 2021
Please cite as: Jovanović, Deana. 2022. “Making Futures in the Capitalist Landscape of Performati... more Please cite as: Jovanović, Deana. 2022. “Making Futures in the Capitalist Landscape of Performative Promises.” Anthropology News website, July 7, 2022.
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale journal , 2021
This paper explores infrastructural disruptions of utility provisioning caused by stealing of cop... more This paper explores infrastructural disruptions of utility provisioning caused by stealing of copper infrastructural parts in a copper-processing town in Serbia. Such illicit practices of infrastructural stripping were part of copper circulation via theft, cynically referred to as ‘recycling’ of copper, and were incentivised by increased copper price and the specific local economy. Drawing from ethnography among the citizens who reacted to the disruption of the heating provision caused by infrastructural stripping and the disfranchised citizens who illegally recycled parts of infrastructures, I shift so far predominant scholarly focus on engagements with infrastructural material flows and/or their stasis to show how governance hinges on the very liquidation of infrastructural channels. Following the underlying mechanics of the ‘state’ and its uneven distributive politics, I argue that stripping of infrastructures and the consequential disruptions were vital in configuring the state as a desired framework necessary to regulate everyday (infrastructural) lives. I analyse how such process was arranged infrastructurally via socialist and post-socialist patterns, which enabled the maintenance of some configurations of power (from the socialist past) to govern the everyday (infrastructural) lives. The paper contributes to the intersection between anthropological literature on infrastructures and the state and the study of post-socialist infrastructures.
Area, 2019
Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant... more Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant political and economic systems, function alongside one another in contemporary cities. While infrastructures attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the "East" of Europe has still largely been left out, as the studies mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper, thus, takes on two challenges by intersecting an infrastructural lens with the re-concep-tualisation of post-socialism. First, following calls from comparative urbanism and the postcolonial turn in urban studies and geography to work beyond usual suspects , the paper expands the territorial scope of infrastructure research. Second, the paper takes the critical edge of the aforementioned calls by offering new ways of attending to infrastructures through relations to the (socialist) past. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more-than-North/South perspective, this paper analyses post-socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. Instead of centralising the present or the "Western" best practice, the paper investigates to what extent it is possible to take elements of the (socialist) past and develop them into forward-looking measures. The paper shows the need to incorporate questions of social justice and equity-perspectives which were more central for infrastructural provision under socialism-into the ways in which infrastructures are planned, made, and used today. K E Y W O R D S green infrastructure, housing, infrastructure, neo-liberalism, post-socialism, transport
Post-Socialist Urban Infrastructures, in eds. T. Tuvikene, Sgibnev, W and Neugebauer, C. S, Post-Socialist Urban Infrastructures, pp.38-53. London: Routledge. , 2019
Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares , 2018
Based on personal experience, this paper shows how shifting and precarious conditions in the lab... more Based on personal experience, this paper shows how shifting and precarious conditions in the labour market impact early career researchers. In particular, it focuses on how visa regimes, citizenship and class difference, and access to " safety nets " , together with structural conditions, impact academic opportunities and daily life differently in Western and Eastern Europe, and how they impose mobility.
Südosteuropa: Journal for Politics and Society , 2018
The author explores reparations of urban sites in Bor, a copper processing town in eastern Serbia... more The author explores reparations of urban sites in Bor, a copper processing town in eastern Serbia. She looks at recent attempts at reparations carried out by an industrial company in the context of the town's and the company's 'revival'. She explores ethnographically how the reparations were seen as deceptions, temporary, partial, fake, and superficial, but simultaneously praised as 'at least something'. The author argues that this ambivalence, which consisted of simultaneous positive and negative dispositions towards the promise the repairs held, resulted in people's involvement in the 'politics of simulation' of the town's and the copper company's 'revival'. She also shows how through people's hope for order, and through their hope of being moral state subjects, the state became an object of emotional investment.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory., 2016
In response to the 2016 Hau debate “Anthropology and the study of contradictions,” I suggest that... more In response to the 2016 Hau debate “Anthropology and the study of contradictions,” I suggest that the anthropological focus on people’s (mutually opposing) dispositions opens more possibilities to capture power relations than the focus on propositions or utterances, proposed by some authors in this debate. I add to the debate an anthropological focus on the future, and I introduce the importance of ambivalence in the study of contradictions.
Ethnos: Journal of Social Anthropology, 2018
The article explores the ‘work of hope’ in relation to air pollution and health hazards in Bor, a... more The article explores the ‘work of hope’ in relation to air pollution and health hazards in Bor, a polluted copper-processing town in Eastern Serbia. The aim of this paper is to show the mutual imbrication of hope and risk by delineating how hope for a stable personal and communal future was anchored in the polluting company and the toxic substances it produced, which, in various ways, provided a sense of possibility and opportunity. I show how the work of hope demanded simultaneous weighing up, manoeuvring, accepting, and bargaining with risks that became an integral part of the work of hope in a social setting where the double bind of growth versus sustainability was deeply embedded. I argue that together, hope and risk were both framing devices for thinking about and living towards futures in a context of reindustrialisation and recent sudden economic flourishing in this post-socialist town.
Filozofija i društvo, Jan 1, 2011
Apstrakt: Polazeći od ideje solidarnosti u feminističkom diskursu koji se bavi suočavanjem sa pro... more Apstrakt: Polazeći od ideje solidarnosti u feminističkom diskursu koji se bavi suočavanjem sa prošlošću u Srbiji, rad pokreće pitanje kako i zašto feminizam može da promišlja mnogostruke različitosti među ženama u Srbiji. U radu se raspravlja o idejama solidarnosti, konceptu moralne odgovornosti i suočavanja sa prošlošću na koje referiraju i feminističke teorije i prakse u Srbiji. Rad otvara pitanje o (feminističkoj) solidarnosti kao o strateškom pojmu i ukazuje na politiku uključivanja/isključivanja mnogostrukih drugosti u okviru nacionalnog kolektiva. Posebna pažnja usmerena je na rodne kategorije i konstrukcije različitosti unutar njih koje su ukratko prikazane kroz rezultate analize narativa sećanja dve grupe žena u Srbiji -medicinskih sestara i antiratnih aktivistkinja -koji služe kao ilustracija različitosti kojima se problematizuje koncept solidarnosti. Pri tom, ukazano je da subjektiviteti, iskustva i rodne pozicije u međusobnoj interakciji oblikuju sećanja, različitosti, ali i odnos prema prošlosti.
Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU, Jan 1, 2008
Идeнтитeт на продају -креирање националног идентитета за потребе туризма У раду јe анализирана ко... more Идeнтитeт на продају -креирање националног идентитета за потребе туризма У раду јe анализирана конструкција националног идeнтитeта на примeру националнe стратeгијe развоја новe туристичкe понудe Србијe, у оквиру процeса "брeндирања" нацијe. Циљ рада јe да сe кроз анализу националнe маркeтинг стратeгијe и нових туристичких брошура, намeњeних иностраним туристима, укажe на начинe на којe сe врше рeпрeзeнтација и култивација новог националног идeнтитeта намeњeног продаји.
… thesis. Utrecht and Hull: University of …
Call for papers by Deana Jovanović
The panel ethnographically explores the practices that blur boundaries between 'falsity' and 'tru... more The panel ethnographically explores the practices that blur boundaries between 'falsity' and 'truth' and practices of pretence, deception, camouflage, and counterfeit in relation to economic crisis and austerity, welfare withdrawal, deregulation of labour, moral economy, ethics, and hope.
The Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and Southeast Europe Associat... more The Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) and Southeast Europe Association (Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft) invite paper proposals for the workshop “Socialist and Post-Socialist Urban Transformation in Small Cities of Southeast Europe ” to be held in Regensburg (Germany) on 9 November 2018.
The aim of this one-day cross-disciplinary workshop which will take is to re-focus studies of socialist and post-socialist urban transformations across Southeast Europe from big cities (primarily capitals) to, so far less researched, small and medium-sized cities. The workshop also aims to shift the debate from the ideological and macroeconomic role of urbanisation to everyday practices and transformations in urban environments.
For the purpose of this workshop, we pragmatically categorise small cities as cities with population up to approximately 200,000. The decisive feature of these cities under scrutiny is that they developed from towns into emerging cities as a result of accelerated urbanisation and industrialisation. Geographically, we aim to generate a comparative discussion on the basis of case-studies from Southeast Europe. The temporal focus of this workshop is the period of socialist and post-socialist urban transformation. We welcome papers from different disciplines (anthropology, history, sociology, urban geography) regarding (but not restricting to) the following domains:
- Spatial patterns: Urban planning; social division; extra-urban settlements; homogenisation or spatial segregation on ethnic grounds; ruralisation; gentrification.
- Communal services and urban infrastructure: Heating, electricity, telecommunication; traffic and roads; public space; waste management and cleanliness.
- Housing: Informal house construction; single-family housing; everyday life in apartments; social inequality; homelessness.
- Economy: industrialisation and de-industrialisation; consumption; trade and crafts; informal economy.
- Environmental issues
Please send us an abstract of the paper proposal (up to 300 words) and a short biographic statement (up to 100 words) by 13 April 2018 to [email protected]. Reasonable travel costs will be covered and accommodation (two nights) will be arranged. We anticipate the publication of the contributions in an edited volume.
Booklet by Deana Jovanović
Publikacija koja je pred vama nastala je u okviru projekta Bor forward >> zamišljanje Budućnosti,... more Publikacija koja je pred vama nastala je u okviru projekta Bor forward >> zamišljanje Budućnosti, koji je realizovan u saradnji sa Zavičajnim odeljenjem Narodne biblioteke Bor. Kao proizvod terenskog boravka u Boru, ona predstavlja deo rezultata mojih istraživanja. Moj doktorat iz socijalne antropologije analizira različite prakse, interpretacije i ideje ljudi o postsocijalističkim transformacijama svakodnevnog života u Boru, u istočnoj Srbiji. Fokus ove studije je na "normalnosti" i "normalnim životima" (Jansen 2009; Greenberg 2011) u odnosu na različita zamišljanja budućnosti ljudi u svakodnevnom životu koje stoje u odnosu prema kulturnim, društvenim, ekonomskim, materijalnim i simboličkim promenama u Boru. U tom smislu ideja je, između ostalog, da istražim ideje ljudi o budućnosti i nadanju (kao i njihove svakodnevne prakse), i da razumem da li i na koji način te ideje i prakse korespondiraju sa diskursima budućnosti i nadanjima koji su ponuđeni od strane kompanije Rudarsko-topioničarski basen Bor (u daljem tekstu: RTB Bor). U širem smislu, ova studija se fokusira na procese postsocijalističkih transformacija, sa naglaskom na to kako su one interpretirane od strane ljudi koji žive u Boru, i na koji način oni odgovaraju na ove promene. Studija istražuje aspekte takvih transformacija u ovom monoindustrijskom gradu i prati međupovezanost između RTB-a i grada, pokušavajući da tu povezanost razume sa stanovišta "običnih" ljudi koji žive u Boru i koji i sami svakodnevno doživljavaju transformacije (Verdery 1996, 11).
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Papers by Deana Jovanović
Call for papers by Deana Jovanović
The aim of this one-day cross-disciplinary workshop which will take is to re-focus studies of socialist and post-socialist urban transformations across Southeast Europe from big cities (primarily capitals) to, so far less researched, small and medium-sized cities. The workshop also aims to shift the debate from the ideological and macroeconomic role of urbanisation to everyday practices and transformations in urban environments.
For the purpose of this workshop, we pragmatically categorise small cities as cities with population up to approximately 200,000. The decisive feature of these cities under scrutiny is that they developed from towns into emerging cities as a result of accelerated urbanisation and industrialisation. Geographically, we aim to generate a comparative discussion on the basis of case-studies from Southeast Europe. The temporal focus of this workshop is the period of socialist and post-socialist urban transformation. We welcome papers from different disciplines (anthropology, history, sociology, urban geography) regarding (but not restricting to) the following domains:
- Spatial patterns: Urban planning; social division; extra-urban settlements; homogenisation or spatial segregation on ethnic grounds; ruralisation; gentrification.
- Communal services and urban infrastructure: Heating, electricity, telecommunication; traffic and roads; public space; waste management and cleanliness.
- Housing: Informal house construction; single-family housing; everyday life in apartments; social inequality; homelessness.
- Economy: industrialisation and de-industrialisation; consumption; trade and crafts; informal economy.
- Environmental issues
Please send us an abstract of the paper proposal (up to 300 words) and a short biographic statement (up to 100 words) by 13 April 2018 to [email protected]. Reasonable travel costs will be covered and accommodation (two nights) will be arranged. We anticipate the publication of the contributions in an edited volume.
Booklet by Deana Jovanović
The aim of this one-day cross-disciplinary workshop which will take is to re-focus studies of socialist and post-socialist urban transformations across Southeast Europe from big cities (primarily capitals) to, so far less researched, small and medium-sized cities. The workshop also aims to shift the debate from the ideological and macroeconomic role of urbanisation to everyday practices and transformations in urban environments.
For the purpose of this workshop, we pragmatically categorise small cities as cities with population up to approximately 200,000. The decisive feature of these cities under scrutiny is that they developed from towns into emerging cities as a result of accelerated urbanisation and industrialisation. Geographically, we aim to generate a comparative discussion on the basis of case-studies from Southeast Europe. The temporal focus of this workshop is the period of socialist and post-socialist urban transformation. We welcome papers from different disciplines (anthropology, history, sociology, urban geography) regarding (but not restricting to) the following domains:
- Spatial patterns: Urban planning; social division; extra-urban settlements; homogenisation or spatial segregation on ethnic grounds; ruralisation; gentrification.
- Communal services and urban infrastructure: Heating, electricity, telecommunication; traffic and roads; public space; waste management and cleanliness.
- Housing: Informal house construction; single-family housing; everyday life in apartments; social inequality; homelessness.
- Economy: industrialisation and de-industrialisation; consumption; trade and crafts; informal economy.
- Environmental issues
Please send us an abstract of the paper proposal (up to 300 words) and a short biographic statement (up to 100 words) by 13 April 2018 to [email protected]. Reasonable travel costs will be covered and accommodation (two nights) will be arranged. We anticipate the publication of the contributions in an edited volume.