The book's theme is the important but often overlooked topic of the relationship between culture and economy in the spaces of former Yugoslavia, or more precisely their symbiosis in the “cultures of economy.” While each chapter redefines this concept, the volume is broadly structured around four aspects: the mainly historical research of the region's economies, economy of the arts, economies as explored in select literary works, and finally economy/ies as revealed and contested in contemporary cinema and theater. The subtitle “Spotlights and Perspectives” indicates that the volume is not meant as a comprehensive overview of its vast subject but instead as a collection of case studies made from a few chosen perspectives.
Opening the book's first section, Jelena Rafailović's chapter provides a substantial and elucidating survey of the region's widely diverse economic terrain with its different economic histories (Slovenia vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina, agriculture vs. extractive industries vs. finances) from 1878 to 1939, and concludes that “before 1940 no process of industrialization resulted in self-sustainable modern growth” (50). Dubravka Stojanović's chapter convincingly shows that the concept of zadruga was, over the course of one century, successfully appropriated for vastly different political projects, from signifying “an imaginary idyllic socialist society of equals…to the cornerstone and bulwark of racial purity” (57–58). Aleksandar Jakir and Anita Lunić's chapter argues that self-management helped bring about the disintegration of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia; the argument does not quite convince as it comes across as selective in its approach and materials that support it while neglecting others which may undermine or complicate it. Reana Senjković focuses on the ways that Yugoslavia's Youth Work Actions (omladinske radne akcije) went about re-socializing juvenile delinquents, but also emphasizes the important shift from those actions’ economic justification (as they proved unprofitable) to the social one, including creation of ties and values that have outlasted the country that created them: “The mere fact that today, more than 1,700 former brigadiers (belonging to the ‘last Yugoslav generation’) found the Internet to be friendly enough to host them (at bilten-ora-sfrj.com) in their wish to…preserve…their community and, more importantly, their values” should make us “not too eager to conclude that Yugoslav voluntary work actions were nothing more than yet another ‘totalitarian’ misperformance” (108).
The book's next section offers captivating chapters on the economy of the arts, from the financing of the Patriarchate of Peć Monastery in early twentieth century (by Ivana Ženarju Rajović), to the well documented dismantling of the myth of the wealthy patron in the case of Slovene impressionist painter Ivan Grohar (by Renata Komić Marn), and an insightful analysis of the search for new relationships among architecture, the global market, and local culture regarding the new National and University Library in Ljubljana (NUK II) by Tina Potočnik. Looking purely at economic management, the reader is struck by the story of Metropolitan Nićifor's 1907 inventive marketing. In order to get his Patriarchate out of debt, he took the miracle-working icon of the Virgin on a road trip (“holy expedition”) and raised the institution's income from 3–4,000 annually to the truly miraculous 250,747 coins (119).
The book's third part offers insightful interpretations of selected literary works’ revelations about specific economic predicaments. Looking at how the two novels from different times and places illuminate the world where ancient miserliness becomes modern capitalist usury, Ivana Perica's inspired comparison between Ivo Andrić's Woman of Sarajevo (1945) and Honoré de Balzac's Eugénie Grandet (1833) shows that Rajka Radaković's unsuccessful transition, in comparison with Eugénie Grandet's successful one, is related to a globally uneven development of capitalism. Yet it is Rajka's “backward” environment with its imperative to belong to one's community (rather than just spend in it), that can still provide a critique of capitalism. Andrea Lešić's insightful discussion of Derviš Sušić's I, Danilo (1960) offers sensitive reading of the novel's stylistic and rhetorical features and Lešić's “against the grain” foregrounding of the tragedy of not only the novel's main character, a socialist “robber-baron” Danilo, but also, or even more so, of his female companions: after tasting gender equality in World War II, they largely reverted to traditional gender roles. Davor Beganović advances an impressive understanding of the complex economy of Borislav Pekić's The Pilgrimage of Arsenije Njegovan, its use of the genre of last will to create an interplay of law, economy and literature, its dichotomies between economic and aesthetic, and its antagonisms between the property economy and the “disembodied” finance economy. Fruitfully engaging the logic of gift's opposition to market exchange, Jurij Murašov illuminates Miljenko Jergović's Buick Rivera (2002) and its two main characters’ symbolic resistance to the US capitalist economy.
The book's final part harkens back to its opening and offers closure. A birth of extractive industries in the volume's opening chapter is here contrasted with the post-industrial landscape of Bor, Serbia, and its (at the time) closed copper mining and processing plant. Here, Nikola Ležaić's film Tilva Roš reveals the “anti-economy of masochism and self-destruction of the teenage generation” (230) for which Tanja Zimmermann's chapter provides a productive economic and artistic context. Miranda Jakiša's closing chapter on two recent “economy plays” from Croatia and Serbia, Ivana Sajko's That is not Us, it's Only Glass and Olga Dimitrijević's Workers Die Singing, foregrounds not only the contrast between the free market's seductive promises and the real impact of neoliberal policies, but also the theater's renewed “aesthetic effectiveness” (261).
The book's one drawback lies in the absence of contributions by economists themselves and a related insufficiency of more straightforward economic analysis. The prevailing reliance on philosophers and social theorists leads to, in general, an emphasis on the distribution of wealth rather than (also) on its original creation in the conditions of either Yugoslav socialism or later “transition.”
Cultures of Economy in South-Eastern Europe is an important and substantial volume that proposes and exemplifies a whole new area of study. It uncovers engaging new materials and advances new ways of seeing the familiar, creating a multi-dimensional, effective insight into the region's “economies of culture.”
