No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Collectivity vs. Connectivity: Highway peripheralization in former Yugoslavia (1940s-1980s)
Abstract
The paper argues that in the 1940s–1950s the construction of the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ highway in former Yugoslavia was an important tool for the formation of a trans-ethnic collective socialist Yugoslav identity, based on the idea of equality of all citizens, of all republics and of ‘building a new Man’. Yet in practice, from the 1960s the constructed auto transport infrastructure started to adapt to pragmatic advantages and produced the opposite – differentiation of the Federation’s cores and peripheries, and a growing sense of individualism with the spread of personal automobility. The paper investigates the elements of this shift, being based on the analysis of official reports, secondary literature and national statistics.
... Additionally, in 1940 Yugoslavia the development and construction of the Brotherhood and Unity highway aimed to play a significant role in the formation of a collective socialist identity. While such an achievement offered connectivity and material advantages, it highlighted the inequalities between core and peripheries and was perceived as a tool to develop tourism (Pozharliev, 2016) following the period after the First World War, during which tourism was seen as the engine for the growth of the local economy in Dalmatia (Chorvát, 2009). More particularly, even though during the first years of Yugoslavia, industrial development was favoured over activities such as tourism, this soon changed in the 1950s, with the government (re)establishing links with foreign tour operators in order to benefit from the growth of mass tourism in Europe (Taylor & Grandits, 2010). ...
The recent discourse on overtourism and anti-tourist attitudes has opened up the space to reimagine tourism development and planning. Employing an interdisciplinary approach we combined research by design methodology and rapid ethnography in order to problematise Dubrovnik's overtourism. The research turned for inspiration to the ex-Yugoslavian resorts and integrated planning. The paper advocates a praxical, socially informed and environmentally aware perspective and proposes interventions that offer the potential of practical applications in Dubrovnik's urban planning. Focusing on the need for connectivity and continuity the interventions address issues of segregation and marginalisation of local groups, such as students and seasonal workers. Inspired by the utopian ideals of socialist resorts, the research developed an urban armature that aims to connect the different parts of the old and modern city, reclaim tourist spaces for locals, and create open spaces in local areas.
In the second half of the 1960s, the Soviet authorities accelerated development of the passenger car industry. The new cars had to meet the best world standards, but they also had to be a source of danger to citizens. Contradiction between the tasks of mass production and safety of citizens caused a clash of interests between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Automobile Industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The article examines the history of the introduction of safety belts
as one of the subjects of this clash, based on the analysis of previously unpublished archival materials, personal documents and articles in the magazine “Za ruliom”. Research shown how the task of introducing safety belts, which initially concerned only export car models, was set at the national level with the active support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Concerns of the Soviet leadership about the increase in accidents during motorization led to a rethinking of how to ensure road safety by creating a safer car. The history of the development, testing, and industrial introduction of seat belts turned out to be a complex process, in which, ultimately, the interests of various Soviet institutions intersected. At the same time, years of press discussions about the benefits of seat belts, which reflected a clash of interagency interests, influenced the opinion of soviet drivers long before seat belts became commercially available.
The article explores the development of energy and transport networks in the Cold War Balkans by bringing three case studies of cross-border connectivity into focus: the Yougelexport project, the Djerdap hydropower station and the Circular Highway. In this endeavour networks are not treated as neutral physical infrastructures, but as social phenomena with political, cultural and economic impact. Hence, the development of cross-border and cross-bloc connectivity projects between the countries of the region is connected with the course of their bilateral relations and the broader political context of the Cold War. Against this background, the article discusses the national political objectives related to infrastructure building and the role of transnational technocratic cooperation in cross-border connectivity projects in the Cold War Balkans.
en In this article I consider what sense it makes to speak of a hybrid automobile ontology in contexts where its constitutive elements – driver, car and traffic system – are ruins. Then, on the basis of passenger‐seat ethnography conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I explore the consequences of the oxymoronic quality of these ruins, which as ‘remains’ both endure and decay, for experiences and senses of being among drivers living under conditions of post‐socialist transition.
Des êtres ruinés: l’ontologie dans la conduite post‐socialiste
fr Dans cet article, j’examine le sens qu’il y a à parler d’une ontologie de l’automobile hybride dans des contextes où ses éléments constitutifs – conducteur, voiture et système de circulation – sont des ruines. Ensuite, sur la base d’une ethnographie des sièges passagers réalisée en Bosnie‐Herzégovine, j’explore les conséquences de la qualité oxymoronique de ces ruines, qui en tant que « vestiges » sont à la fois durables et en déclin, sur les expériences et les sensations des conducteurs qui vivent dans des conditions de transition post‐socialiste.
The article demonstrates how development of the car cultures in the city of Yakutsk, northeastern Russia, is facilitated by the proximity of Japan, where street racing and drift driving became popular through such outlets as the manga series, animation films, YouTube, and a blockbuster film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. These influences, which arrived in Siberia from across the Sea of Japan and Hollywood, highlight the shifting geographies and multiple cultural entanglements of the technological advancements in the global space. Through these cultural engagements, young people in the city establish a different perception of the road, endowing it with heterotopic qualities. The article explores the heterotopia of the road in anthropology. Hétérotopie de la route : le drift en Sibérie Résumé Cet article démontre comment le développement des cultures automobiles à Iakoutsk, grande ville du nord‐est de la Russie, est facilité par la proximité du Japon, où les courses de rue et le drift sont devenus populaires à travers les mangas, les films d'animation, YouTube, et une superproduction sur grand écran : Fast & Furious : Tokyo Drift. Ces influences, arrivées en Sibérie par la mer du Japon et Hollywood, mettent en exergue les déplacements géographiques et la multiplicité des enchevêtrements culturels qui entourent les avancées technologiques dans l'espace mondial. À travers ces enchevêtrements culturels, la jeunesse de la ville développe une nouvelle perception de la route, lui conférant des qualités hétérotopiques. L'article se penche sur l'hétérotopie de la route en anthropologie.
The article explores how transport networks in the Western Balkans are transformed from physical infrastructures into political instruments. It concentrates on two case studies: the construction of the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ Highway and the endeavour of connectivity in the Western Balkans. It examines how the first was involved in the process of constructing a Yugoslav ‘community of nations’ and how the latter is integrated into the broader scheme of ‘region building’ in the Western Balkans. The analysis considers how transport networks are transformed into political instruments in each case and reflects on the limits and the reversibility of this political endeavour.
The Highway of Brotherhood and Unity - the motto of Yugoslav Communists – may help us decode the multiple layers of meaning interlocked in the built environment. Undoubtedly, construction of the Highway was organic to national cohesion. Built by brigades of young volunteers, the Highway allowed a one-day trip across Yugoslavia: an experiential approach of the common motherland by which “federalism” acquired a concrete dimension.
From an architect’s viewpoint, our contribution lays claim to a project-oriented approach to the Highway as a coherent built-up form, posing new technical problems, yet orienting urban change and opening up a whole range of narratives. To do that, we oscillate back and forth actual construction of the Highway - combining engineering, landscape design, urbanism and architecture - and its role as a catalyst of new collective perceptions and behavioural patterns. The Highway provided the centre of gravity for a far-reaching cross-cultural venture, a large-scale collective work of art.
This chapter examines the symbolic significance of streets, and how people took possession of them, in the Soviet city of Naberezhnye Chelny during the Brezhnev era. Naberezhnye Chelny was designed to be a model city of the future. It was intented to make good, in urban planning terms, on the promises given by the political leadership to the workers in return for their participation in this large project. These promises included a car and an apartment, education, vacation time, and recreation. The chapter first provides a background on truck factory KamAZ and Naberezhnye Chelny before focusing on the vehicles—streetcars, buses, trucks, and cars—that traveled the city streets. It then considers the public transportation system in Naberezhnye Chelny and the extent to which the use of private vehicles was taken into account in the planning of the city. It shows that traffic planning did not assign preferential status to the Socialist Car over buses and the streetcar, and suggests that automobility failed to appear in provincial towns such as Naberezhnye Chelny during the Brezhnev era.
Across the Soviet Bloc, from the 1960s until the collapse of communism, the automobile exemplified the tension between the ideological imperatives of political authorities and the aspirations of ordinary citizens. For the latter, the automobile was the ticket to personal freedom and a piece of the imagined consumer paradise of the West. For the authorities, the personal car was a private, mobile space that challenged the most basic assumptions of the collectivity. The "socialist car"-and the car culture that built up around it-was the result of an always unstable compromise between official ideology, available resources, and the desires of an increasingly restless citizenry. In The Socialist Car, eleven scholars from Europe and North America explore in vivid detail the interface between the motorcar and the state socialist countries of Eastern Europe, including the USSR. In addition to the metal, glass, upholstery, and plastic from which the Ladas, Dacias, Trabants, and other still extant but aging models were fabricated, the socialist car embodied East Europeans' longings and compromises, hopes and disappointments. The socialist car represented both aspirations of overcoming the technological gap between the capitalist first and socialist second worlds and dreams of enhancing personal mobility and status. Certain features of automobility-shortages and privileges, waiting lists and lack of readily available credit, the inadequacy of streets and highways-prevailed across the Soviet Bloc. In this collective history, the authors put aside both ridicule and nostalgia in the interest of trying to understand the socialist car in its own context.