Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass industrialisation under Tito led many young women to join traditionally 'feminised' sectors, and as a consequence the textile sector grew rapidly, fast becoming a gendered symbol of industrialisation, consumption and socialist modernity. By the 1980s Yugoslavia was one of the world's leading producers of textiles and garments. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, however, resulted in factory closures, bankruptcy and layoffs, forcing thousands of garment industry workers into precarious and often exploitative private-sector jobs. Drawing on more than 60 oral history interviews with former and current garment workers, as well as workplace periodicals and contemporary press material collected across Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia, Women and Industry in the Balkans charts the rise and fall of the Yugoslav textile sector, as well as the implications of this post-socialist transition, for the first time. In the process, the book explores broader questions about memories of socialism, lingering feelings of attachment to the socialist welfare system and the complexity of the post-socialist era. This is important reading for all scholars working on the history and politics of Yugoslavia and the Balkans, oral history, memory studies and gender studies.
Author(s): Chiara Bonfiglioli
Series: International Library of Historical Studies, 105
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 224
City: London
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Key contributions
Chapter 1: Industrializing Yugoslavia: Market socialism and textile workers’ structure of feeling
Textile factories in the interwar era
‘Factories to the workers’: From shock-work to self-management
Biking to the night shift: Women’s emancipation through labour
The factory as a socialist microcosm: Work, welfare and leisure
Balancing welfare and productivity: Paternalist management in socialism
Chapter 2: Being a seamstress in Yugoslav times: The ‘working mother’ gender contract
Re-conceptualizing the double burden in the Yugoslav context
From 3.00 am to 10.00 pm: The seamstresses’ endless working day
‘What do you get from being a party member?’: On the ‘triple burden’
Women ‘made of granite’: Workers’ portraits in the factory press
Seamstresses on screen: Workers’ representations in popular culture
Chapter 3: Labour after Yugoslavia: Post-socialism and deindustrialization in the textile sector
Post-socialist transformations in the textile sector
‘Before it was different, it was easier’: Work across generations
‘Only duties and no rights’: The subcontracting limbo
Trade unions in post-Yugoslav states
Chapter 4: Workers’ structure of feeling after deindustrialization: Loss, nostalgia and belonging
Deindustrialized landscapes across the post-Yugoslav space
Threads of belonging: Remembering the factory as a second home
Missing the future: The end of intergenerational solidarity
Feeling Yugoslav: Nostalgia for brotherhood and unity
Matters of gender and class: Critical Yugo-nostalgia
Chapter 5: Beyond nostalgia: Workers’ struggles for social justice and everyday resilience
Industrial workers’ struggles in the cultural, artistic and academic realm
Heads up: Textile workers’ strikes and collective organizing
Do it yourself: Everyday survival strategies
Conclusion
Working-class women and their structure of feeling
Post-Yugoslav textile production between the local and the global
Bibliography
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Online sources and press
Index
