• 1 Vodopivec Nina, Labirinti postsocializma: Socialni spomini tekstilnih delavk in delavcev [Labyrinth (...)

1Soon after I began writing Chiara Bonfiglioli’s book review, I realized that the text would outgrow review format. I find Bonfiglioli’s book even more inspiring as I myself have studied the memories and experiences of women textile workers in Slovenia, one of the former Yugoslav republics, for the past twenty years. My study focused on Slovenia, but I interpreted my findings in a broader, comparative framework. As a social anthropologist, I am interested in ethnographic work. Based on grounded theory, I aim to conduct in-depth research by collecting life stories, interviews, working with my interlocutors over a period of time and conducting participant observations (including in the factory). I have focused particularly on the experience of work.1 What I really appreciate in this book is the detailed interdisciplinary and comparative study that it provides of women industrial workers in socialist Yugoslavia and in post-Yugoslav space. It is this gendered perspective of social and labor history and comparative frame which make it an extremely important contribution.

• 2 Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry, p. 17.

2The book begins with the development of the textile sector during the interwar period, but quickly moves to socialist industrialization and post-socialist deindustrialization. It relies mainly on oral histories, as Bonfiglioli (well trained in feminist oral history) is primarily interested in how socialist industrial modernization is remembered in contemporary times. However, other historical sources are also used to portray the experiences of women industrial workers during socialism: archival documents, statistics, reports on the development of the textile industry and women’s political participation, factory periodicals, daily newspapers, documentary films, TV series and historical studies. The sources are written mainly in English, Serbian or Croatian. Such a broad use of historical sources from many parts of former Yugoslavia is remarkable. The research seeks to “collect working class women’s voices in a variety of local settings, and to uncover different localized narratives of industrialization and deindustrialization across the post-Yugoslav space in a comparative perspective.”2 Taking an oral history approach – from subjective experiences that the author shows were socially and historically framed – the book points to the gap between women workers’ memories and historical studies of inequalities within the Yugoslav socialist system. Bonfiglioli’s main questions are: Why is socialism consistently equated with “normality” in the eyes of many citizens previously employed in industry, and described as comprising good working relations, job security, state sovereignty vis-a-vis the global market economy and the functioning of the welfare state? Why is factory work associated with dignity, interpersonal relations and interethnic coexistence and solidarity?

• 3 Byrne David, “Industrial Culture in a Post-Industrial World: The Case of the North East of England, (...)

4The book stems from deindustrialization and gender history research and takes an intersectional approach. Deindustrialization studies consist of historical and sociological research that examined deindustrialization as an ongoing process with far-reaching effects on local communities, urban landscapes and future generations.3 These studies, however, have focused mainly on post-Fordist industrial transformations in capitalist countries, and particularly on male-dominated industries. Bonfiglioli’s focus on women and Yugoslavia therefore brings enhanced gender and post-socialist perspectives to studies of deindustrialization. The focus on Yugoslavia is also a contribution to the post-socialist studies, another comparative frame in the book.

• 4 E.g., Archer Rory, Duda Igor, Stubbs Paul (eds), Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Soc (...)
• 5 Archer Rory, Musić Goran, “Approaching the Socialist Factory and its Workforce: Considerations from (...)
• 6 Ibid.; Bieber Florian, Galijaš Armina, Archer Rory (eds), Debating the End of Yugoslavia, London, R (...)
• 7 For some of these research, see Petrović Tanja, “When We were Europe: Socialist Workers in Serbia a (...)

5Its gendered perspective makes the book also a welcome contribution to a wave of research examining the working-class experience in socialist Yugoslavia. Over the past decade, a new generation of labor and social historians has emerged dedicated to the study of everyday experiences in Yugoslavia. Some examine social inequalities and their consequences in Yugoslav society.4 They build on social science research conducted in Yugoslavia between the 1970s and 1990s, adding other primary historical sources and contemporary theoretical perspectives. This research reveals the gap between official discourses, explanations, declarations and everyday realities; it also highlights that distribution in socialist Yugoslavia was unequal and that people were dissatisfied. The research also presents a factory as an important institution of political activity, daily routines and leisure practices.5 This new scholarship challenged the dominant interpretive framework for Southeastern Europe dominated by the issue of nationalism, conflict and war. Their goal was to “bring class back into research,” as also stated by Archer, Stubbs and Duda in the introduction of an edited book on social inequalities.6 These labor and social history scholars were educated mainly outside Eastern or Southeastern European institutions, and continued their research at centers located mainly outside the region. One of the few exceptional regional sites for this research is the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism (Centar za kulturološka i povjesna istraživanja socializma) at Juraj Dobrila University in Pula. Social and labor history have been researched here consistently since 2012, and Bonfiglioli has been a repeated collaborator and was an affiliate while collecting oral histories in Croatia. A similar center was established in Slovenia at the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies (Inštitut za kulturne in spominske študije) ZRC SAZU, where an interdisciplinary research team studies memories and affects, including those of industrial workers, in a comparative perspective.7 When, as a social anthropologist, I started researching the memories and experiences of female textile workers in 2002, there was little interest in this topic, either in academia or among the general public in Slovenia. Even now, there are few researchers in Slovenia who study the past or present experiences of industrial workers, aside from the sociologist Miroslav Stanojevič, who has studied industrial restructuring in Slovenia over the past thirty years with a macro-level focus. However, a growing interest can be observed among the younger generations of students. The topic was also presented in some documentaries and theater plays, and recently it has become more interesting for museums, especially for local museums (as part of industrial heritagization).

• 8 Archer and Musić, “New Perspectives,” art. cit., p. 21.

6According to contemporary labor historians Rory Archer and Goran Musić, the recent interest of scholars in Yugoslav labor and social history can be traced to East European labor history, which developed from Anglo-Saxon social historiography of the Soviet working class and then combined it with cultural historical and social anthropological approaches.8 Another important feature of this new scholarship dealing with industrial labor relations in self-managed Yugoslavia, shared by Bonfiglioli, is a global-historical orientation that turns away from methodological nationalism, which Bonfiglioli achieves in her book through her multi-sited fieldwork and a comparative perspective. Her earlier studies of women’s encounters across Cold War borders and in-depth study of women’s biographies, have encouraged her to call for a larger interpretive framework – a broader socio-political context and interpretation as a lifelong perspective. Interpreting women’s memories and experiences in a life perspective and in historically specific sociocultural spaces requires an intersectional approach. Gender regimes in socialism varied across Eastern Europe, Bonfiglioli reminds us, and should be examined in terms of class, geographic location, generational affiliation, ethnicity and nationality. Of these, she argues, and I would agree, class and generation are the most important characteristics to consider with regards to the narratives of women textile workers (blue and white collar).

• 9 See also Bonfiglioli Chiara, “Feminist Translations in a Socialist Context: The Case of Yugoslavia, (...)

7Bonfiglioli has extensive knowledge of gender history in Southeastern Europe (longue durée perspective) and of women’s political activism and agency. She draws on local feminist knowledge to argue against the portrayal of “Balkan women” as victims, and points to transnational (i.e. across Cold War borders) encounters and knowledge transfers.9 The book argues for an examination of socialist gender politics in Yugoslavia beyond prevailing interpretations of women’s lack of agency and pervasive state control.

• 10 Williams Raymond, Marxism and Literature, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1978.
• 11 Ibid., p. 131-132, cited in Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry, p. 5.

9The book’s main argument is that post-Yugoslav nostalgia for labor and welfare rights is rooted in the specific structure of a feeling that emerged in industrial workplaces during socialism, at the intersection of ideology, socioeconomic transformation and workers’ everyday lives, as well as deindustrialization and the collapse of socialism. The book’s main concept – “industrial structure of feeling” – derives from the deindustrialization literature to discuss the ways of life that were shaped by industrialization. The concept was coined by cultural theorist Raymond Williams to capture a particular quality of social experience and relationships, which gives a sense of a generation or of a period.10 Williams used the term to indicate “meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt”11 and that persist despite socio-political contextual change. According to deindustrialization studies, industrial production created specific industrial structures of feeling that persisted despite political economic change and deindustrialization. On the one hand, the female workers’ memories in Bonfiglioli’s book illustrate a strong rupture between the socialist past and the present. This rupture is based on the change that came with the post-socialist transition and the new nation-states. On the other hand, the oral narratives point to continuities and persistence.

• 12 Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry, p. 3.

12The textile industry played an important role in the history of industrialization of Yugoslavia. It began to develop at the end of the nineteenth century and especially in the interwar period, but flourished only after the 1950s. After the Yugoslav-Soviet split, its development followed the introduction of a mixed market economy based on workers’ self-management (with a slogan “Factories to the Workers”). Textile factories gradually spread from urban centers to rural areas, employing (in the late 1980s) 474,000 people, of whom about 80-90% were women, working mainly in production. This number represented 17% of all industrial workers. The manufacturing industry exported garments and textiles all over the world. The closure of textile factories led to the loss of more than 350,000 jobs, leaving many workers in great precarity.12 These figures can illustrate the dimension of the phenomenon. It should be emphasized, however, that deindustrialization was an uneven process and some regions were more affected than others. Bonfiglioli does not conclude her study as signaling the “end of industry,” but for some people and regions, the end is definite.

• 13 See also Bonfiglioli Chiara, “Gendering Social Citizenship: Textile Workers in post-Yugoslav States (...)
• 14 Bonfiglioli, Women and Industry, p. 19.

13Bonfiglioli challenges the concepts of state patriarchy, emancipation from above, and double burden. She explores the everyday life of working women during socialism in its complexity, including ambivalences and negotiations (as do several other local scholars, some of whom are also mentioned in the book). Bonfiglioli examines women’s work experiences in socialist Yugoslavia in relation to welfare arrangements attached to factory work. The issue of women’s emancipation is thus related to women’s access to employment, education and welfare provisions, as well as to the range of choices that women had through factory work and to ways women themselves understood the term and their own agency. And women in Bonfiglioli’s book were also critical. The labor market was segregated by gender in socialist Yugoslavia, and despite significant changes, women occupied mainly unskilled, lower-paid jobs in feminized labor-intensive sectors. Despite the limits of socialist emancipation, paid work outside the home became part of many women’s identity and contributed to self-realization, economic independence and the possibility of access to social citizenship rights.13 Bonfiglioli points to the centrality of work in women’s lives. Hard work was a common feature of the daily life of textile workers, who besides working in production continued their work at home (with children, households, even working on farms). A double burden indeed marked their lives heavily. But the author also shows that women’s double burden in socialism was not overlooked, it was discussed by socialist authorities and by women workers themselves. On the other hand, women negotiated their productive and reproductive roles, their roles in both spheres were valued by the state, society and women themselves. Yet, the double burden was also naturalized and privatized. The “gender norm of woman’s endless resilience became part of garment workers’ industrial structure of feeling, together with welfare arrangements and intersubjective factory relations.”14

• 15 Compare Archer and Musić, “Approaching,” art. cit.
• 16 The care of industrial workers for their machines and their factory should be more emphasized in ou (...)
• 17 Musić, Making and Breaking, op. cit.

14In its conclusion, the book argues for further cross-border comparative research on the industrial structure of feeling in socialist Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav states, as well as for a deeper investigation of specific historical periods. I would also add that it would be fruitful to extend the comparison with male industrial workers’ experiences in socialist Yugoslavia together with female (and male) industrial workers’ experiences in capitalist countries. There are many similarities in the way deindustrialization is experienced, at the same time there are also differences. These could be attributed to the stronger role of industrial workers in the socialist narrative of self-management (in particular women) as well as in everyday reality and to the intertwining of work, leisure, welfare, factory and community life in socialism.15 Industrial workers in the former Yugoslavia built local infrastructure and enhanced social standards with their investments. They contributed physically (with their own hands); they invested time, energy, skills and money (which was deducted from their wages). In socialist Yugoslavia, “the social standard” (družbeni/društveni standard) was achieved through perceived mutual investment. Workers saw their labor as an investment in “their” factory and local community and expected certain entitlements in return. These entitlements were not simply given to them. They “earned” them. While it is true that on the one hand socialist paternalism was understood as the specific care of a factory or state for workers, on the other this care was not one-sided.16 My interlocutors understood their relationship with the factory as one that was built intersubjectively through mutual engagements and commitments. Thus, the attachment to the factory and the local community is more complex than in the capitalist West. Moreover, it is also related to the self-management system. Bonfiglioli, Musić and I have all found that self-management strengthened workers’ loyalty and belonging to a particular factory rather than to the Yugoslav industrial working class.17 This is an important finding, indicating that identity was above all very much local and factory-based, again underlining the importance of the factory as an entity. However, if we reflect further on this attachment, we find that self-management was successful precisely because it built on the traditional ties of the family and the local community, integrating them perfectly into the organism of the factory (microcosm) and thus creating very specific links between families, local communities and factories.

• 18 Vodopivec, Tu se ne bo nikoli več šivalo, op. cit., p. 25-56; Bahnisch Mark, “Embodied Work, Divide (...)
• 19 See also Fikfak Jurij, Prinčič Jože (eds), Biti direktor v času socializma: Med idejami in praksami(...)
• 20 Vodopivec, Tu se ne bo nikoli več šivalo, op. cit., p. 116-123.

15Self-management in Yugoslavia was, as Bonfiglioli aptly describes, intertwined with Fordism: The organization of work was based on strict hierarchies, piece-rate regimes promoted competence, and the separation between physical (operational) and mental (executive) workers formed a sharp division between “us” (the production workers) and “them” (the management and staff in the offices).18 Self-management, on the other hand, softened these disciplines and divisions and strengthened the factory as a unit. Self-management did not give workers decision-making power over factory management. However, in the workers’ councils (the institution of self-management), workers could voice their grievances and injustices, at least to some extent, management had to justify its decisions, and workers’ voices played a role in improving wages and working and living conditions. After the 1960s, with the introduction of market socialism, the success of the factory depended primarily on the resourcefulness of the directors and their management team.19 In day-to-day reality, however, the directors were dependent on the workers because of, among other things, worn-out machinery, inefficient economic policies, rigid bureaucratic procedures, customs controls (materials arrived late at the factory, resulting in very tight deadlines), inflexible export/import policies, bottlenecks, etc. Production workers had to work overtime and fast to meet deadlines. So, in practice, the work of production workers was valued on many levels. Such everyday difficulties reinforced and solidified a factory collective.20

• 21 I am addressing embodiment as an “indeterminate methodological field defined by perceptual experien (...)

17In order to better understand contemporary feelings of dispossession we should consider these attachments as embodied experiences.21 As already noted, Bonfiglioli began her study in 2012, when most textile factories had collapsed or been privatized. The narratives she elicited of the post-socialist restructurings were, as she notes, entangled with memories of aggression, war and exclusion, new statehoods —and “wild” or “corrupt” privatizations. Bonfiglioli recognizes that the new form of capitalist accumulation was produced by multiple dispossessions. This is a really important point that should be articulated even more precisely throughout the book so that we, the readers, can better understand what lies behind the nostalgic narratives. Bonfiglioli does show that nostalgia is not a mere idealization of a life that never existed, and that its articulation is an expression of women’s agency, resilience, worthiness and entitlement. Yet, it would be important to point out even more explicitly that expressions of loss and nostalgic laments are also attempts to articulate disposesssion.

• 22 David Harvey – in his article “The ‘New’ Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession,” Socialist Reg (...)
• 23 See also Kosmos, Petrović and Pogačar, Zgodbe iz Konzerve, op. cit.; Vodopivec, Tu se ne bo nikoli (...)
• 24 Jerry Lembcke cited in Kasmir and Carbonello, “Dispossession and Anthropology of Labour,” art. cit.
• 25 Anthropologist Jong Ben Kwon focuses on bodily dispossession, which he explains as structural viole (...)
• 26 Boyer Dominik, “From Algos to Autonomos: Nostalgic Eastern Europe as Postimperial Mania,” in Maria (...)
• 27 Vodopivec, Tu se ne bo nikoli več šivalo, op. cit.

18The concept of accumulation by dispossession, developed by David Harvey and critically built upon by anthropologists Sharryn Kasmir and Augosto Carbonello,22 reminds us that deindustrialization was not a natural historical process,23 but a political phenomenon, that involved the disorganization of the industrial working class.24 Thus, deindustrialization was far reaching and caused the suffering and impoverishment, both material and symbolic, of industrial workers, as dispossession was multi-faceted: political, social, symbolic and even physical.25 Dispossession encompassed the deprivation of labor rights, welfare arrangements and job security. It also involved the devaluation of industrial workers and tore apart the means of their social reproduction, attacking political, social, cultural and material infrastructures. Moreover, dispossession was rendered politically and socially invisible. In my research in Slovenia, it became clear that industrial workers were not recognized as dispossessed. They were deemed to be “socialist” and “nostalgic” subjects who reflected too much on the past and could not move forward. Such “nostalgification” of industrial workers26 further affected their possibilities.27 Beyond the initial moment of dispossession, industrial workers’ experiences and feelings remained unarticulated; dispossession took away even the possibility to name the experience.

• 28 The importance of such recognition is pointed out by Bonfiglioli above all in the last chapter. See (...)
• 29 Besides Bonfiglioli, see also Gilbert Andrew, Kurtović Larisa, Stapić Boris, “Reclaiming Dita,” Ant (...)

19The recognition of dispossession is thus important.28 Reading about cultural practices, artistic interventions and the contemporary activists’ and academic collaborations with industrial workers in Bonfiglioli’s book alongside some other anthropological accounts29 makes me think that articulation of protest and resistance against dispossession is present in other regions more than in Slovenia.