Small Socialism: The Scales of Self-Management Culture in Postwar Yugoslavia

Slavic Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-584
Author(s):  
James Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
State Power ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Management Culture ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Soviet Model

During the early 1950s the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia underwent a series of radical politico-economic reforms that created the system of socialist self-management. Although scholars have long acknowledged that these reforms liberalized the field of cultural production, the precise ways in which self-management shaped Yugoslav culture during this period remains under-examined. Drawing from Daniel Immerwahr's concept of “thinking small,” this paper contends that self-management be thought of as an effort to rescale the horizons of socialist modernity. As Yugoslav reformers diverged from the Soviet model of Stalinist high modernism, they descaled state power to local sites of administration. This turn towards “small socialism” was recorded in certain conceptual and methodological trends in the cultural production of this period. This paper explores this recalibration of the scales of socialist culture in three examples from the 1950s: the urban theory of Bogdan Bogdanović, the revival of dialect poetry in Croatia, and the proliferation of domestic travelogues that emphasized the diversity of local cultures. As these examples demonstrate, the ambivalence that many Yugoslav intellectuals felt with regards to the high modernist scales of Stalinism prompted them to redirect the focus of socialist culture towards the marginal, the minor, or the minute.

NAVIGATING THE POSTWAR LIBERAL ORDER: AUTONOMY, CREATIVITY AND MODERNISM IN SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA, 1949–1953

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES M. ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
International Order ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Self Management ◽  
Social Self ◽  
Reform Period ◽  
Embedded Liberalism ◽  
Miroslav Krleza ◽  
Participatory Model

Between the years 1949 and 1953 the leaders of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia embarked on a series of radical social and economic reforms that restructured state–society relations in line with a decentralized, participatory model of socialism. “Self-management socialism,” as this system became known, served to harmonize local revolutionary ambitions with the embedded liberalism of the postwar international order into which Yugoslavia sought to integrate. During the early reform period Yugoslav intellectuals reorganized socialist ideology around new understandings of autonomy and creativity in ways that resonated with liberal traditions and diverged sharply from the Soviet paradigm. These concepts informed Yugoslav ideas of social self-management and national self-determination and facilitated the country's orientation to the postcolonial world. They also underpinned the new realm of cultural production, where reformers such as Miroslav Krleža and Marko Ristić mobilized this new concern with autonomous creativity to revive previously discarded aesthetic theories of interwar modernism.

“I Go Against the Grain of Your Memory”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production

This chapter charts the artistic trajectory of northeastern Brazilian poet, singer, writer, playwright and actor José Paes de Lira, known as Lirinha, situating his experiments as a long-standing attempt to reject and revise the regional folklorism within which audiences and critics often received his performances. The chapter examines Lirinha’s work, both as the visionary behind the nationally acclaimed group Cordel do Fogo Encantado (1998–2010) and in his subsequent musical and theatrical efforts. It also traces Lirinha’s turn away from folklorism as a reaction against narratives of “cultural rescue” that pressured him to uphold static notions of cultural roots. Reinforcing an overarching argument within this volume, Sharp argues that Lirinha’s work is culturally transformative within its particular field of cultural production, even if it is not always audible as experimental.

Before Animal Sacrifice, A Myth of Innocence

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ullucci
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Meat Eating ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Interpretive Model ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Antiquity

AbstractAnimal sacrifice was one of the most pervasive and socially significant practices of Graeco-Roman religion. Yet, numerous Greek and Latin writers tell of a golden before the advent of sacrifice and meat eating. In this idealized world, humans lived at one with the gods and animal sacrifice did not exist. Such texts are often seen as part of a wider ancient critique of Greco-Roman religion in general and animal sacrifice in particular. This interpretive model, largely sprung from Christian theologizing, sees animal sacrifice as a meaningless and base act, destined to be superseded. As a result of this 'critique model', scholars have not asked what the myth of a world without sacrifice means in a world in which sacrifice predominated. This paper seeks to correct the above view by analyzing these texts as instances of created myth. It approaches each occurrence of the myth as an instance of position-taking by a player in the field of cultural production. The paper seeks to further a redescription of Greco-Roman antiquity by revealing the variety of ancient positions on sacrifice and their strategic use by competing cultural producers.

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