Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis richly illustrated volume features more than fifty, often beautiful, black-and-white photographs of everyday scenes.Everyday Life in the Balkans is a smart sampler, a best-off that provides short glimpses into late socialist, post-socialist, and recent scholarship. It is highly recommended bedtime reading for any scholar of the region—student or more advanced—interested in looking beyond his or her own nose.
* Suedosteuropa *
Tthis volume offers invaluable insights into how the people of the Balkans construct their daily life in terms of art, religion, history, and ethnic relations.
* KULT online *
The edited volume Everyday Life in the Balkans shows us that what is mundane is not at all boring. . . . Overall, this book is a welcome contribution to the literature on both the Balkans and everyday life. Its contributors together paint a vivid composite picture of life in an area that has been misunderstood for so long. This volume will go a long way in countering such misunderstandings by creating familiarity with local cultures and customs.
-- Victoria Clement * Europe-Asia Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgements
1. Seeing Everyday Life in the Balkans / David W. Montgomery
Section I: The (Historical) Context of Everyday Life
2. Early Balkan Everyday Life / Andrew Wachtel
3. Crimes and Misdemeanors: Scenes of Everyday Life among the Gendarmerie in Ottoman Macedonia, ca. 1900 / Ipek K. Yosmaoğlu
4. It's What's Inside That Counts: Furnishing the Modern in the Apartments of Socialist Yugoslavia / Patrick Hyder Patterson
5. Consuming Lives: Inside the Balkan Kafene / Mary Neuburger
6. Burek, Da! Sociality, Context, and Idiom in Macedonia and Beyond / Keith Brown
Section II: The Home(s) of Everyday Life
7. Kinship and Safety Nets in Croatia and Kosovo / Carolin Leutloff-Grandits
8. "This Much We Know": Domestic Remedies and Quotidian Tricks since Tito's Bosnia / Larisa Jašarević
9. Femininity, Fashion, and Feminism: Women's Activists in Bosnia-Herzegovina / Elissa Helms
10. That Black Cloud upon Our Family: Everyday Life of Gays and Lesbians in Slovenia / Roman Kuhar
11. Between Past and Future: Young People's Strategies for Living a "Normal Life" in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina / Monika Palmberger
12. "But Where Else Could They Go?" The State, Family, and Private Care in a Bosnian Town / Azra Hromadžić
Section III: The Livelihoods of Everyday Life
13. Cars, Coffee, and "The Crisis": Balkan Migration in Precarious Times / Ana Croegaert
14. "We Don't Belong Anywhere": Everyday Life in a Serbian Town Where Immigrants Are Former Refugees / Mila Dragojević
15. Neoliberal Spaces of Immorality: The Creation of a Bulgarian Land Market and "Land-grabbing" Foreign Investors / Deema Kaneff
16. Making Ends Meet in a Rural Community: The Life and Times of Aleksandar Živojinović / Andrew Konitzer
17. A Lot of Sweat, a Little Bit of Fun, and Not Entirely "Hard Men": Worker's Masculinity in the Uljanik Shipyard / Andrea Matošević
18. Perceptions of Balkan Belonging in Post-dictatorship Greece / Daniel M. Knight
Section IV: The Politics of Everyday Life
19. Neither the Balkans nor Europe: The "Where" and "When" in Present-day Albania / Nataša Gregorič Bon
20. Growing Up in Montenegro: A Story of Transformation and Resistance / Jelena Džankić
21. War Criminals, National Heroes, and Transitional Justice in Macedonia / Vasiliki P. Neofotistos
22. A Lively Border / Čarna Brković and Stef Jansen
23. "Politicians Are All Crooks!" Everyday Politics in Bulgaria / Emilia Zankina
24. Life among Statues in Skopje / Ilká Thiessen
Section V: The Religion(s) of Everyday Life
25. "The Hardest Time was the Time without Morality": Religion, Transition, and Social Navigation in Albania / David W. Montgomery
26. Ramadan in Prizren / Frances Trix
27. The Cross at the Crossroads: The Feast of Slava between Faith and Custom / Milica Bakić-Hayden
28. Boundaries of Freedom, Boundaries of Responsibility: Everyday Religious Life of Croatian Catholic Women / Slavica Jakelić
29. Religious Boundaries, Komsholuk, and Sharing Sacred Spaces in Bulgaria / Magdalena Lubanska
30. The Everyday of Religion and Politics in the Balkans / Albert Doja
Section VI: The Art of Everyday Life
31. Unintentional Memorials: Everyday Places of Memory in Post-transition Bucharest / Alyssa Grossman
32. Between East and West, Folk and Pop, State and Market: Changing Landscapes of Bulgarian Folk Music / Carol Silverman
33. Mothers in Balkan Film / Yana Hashamova
34. Memories of Foreign Love / Ervin Hatibi
35. The Sound of Charcoal Rustling: Drawing from Life in Belgrade / Marko Živković
Postface / David W. Montgomery
Index
