engleski

Emergent class relations: cultural expressions of existential class in South East Europe

This paper reports on the results of an application of Bourdieuan class and cultural analysis in the context of four South East European postsocialist societies (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) characterized by a pronounced lack of understanding of both historical and contemporary class relations at the wide social level. A quarter of a century after the demise of socialism, the analyzed post-Yugoslav countries, which have in the meantime become largely characterized by what has been described as ‘embedded neo-liberalism’ (Bohle, Greskovits, 2007) have still not internalized contemporary classed relations the meaning and implications of which are widely understood in social contexts with a longer history of class distinctions. Based on the results of the nationally representative surveys carried out in the analyzed countries within the project ‘Life-Strategies and Survival Strategies of Households and Individuals in South-East European Societies in the Times of Crisis’ (SCOPES 152626), which were subjected to Multiple Correspondence Analysis, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, and Multidimensional Scaling, several types of ‘existential classes’ were identified in the individual countries under discussion (Cveticanin, TomicKoludrovic, Petric, Leguina Ruzzi, 2016). A cluster analysis of cultural and digital practices, including their economic dimension (Zdravkovic, Petric, Tomic- Koludrovic, 2016) has resulted in socially more readily recognizable types related to the ‘probable classes’ obtained by the previously mentioned analysis. The paper is a discussion of why and how these cultural expressions of class relations can serve as a basis for ‘subjective’ internalization of class differences in these societies with fragile class consciousness.

Class and culture analysis; post-socialism; South-East Europe

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