Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia [1 ed.] 9781782380412, 9781782380405

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ETHNOBAROQUE

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

Copyright © 2013. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

Ethno-Baroque Materiality, Aesthetics, and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia

E

Copyright © 2013. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Rozita Dimova

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

Published in 2013 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2013 Rozita Dimova All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dimova, Rozita.    Ethno-baroque : materiality, aesthetics, and conflict in modern-day Macedonia / Rozita Dimova.      pages cm    Includes index.    ISBN 978-1-78238-040-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-041-2 (institutional ebook)   1. Ethnology—Macedonia. 2. Material culture—Macedonia. 3. National characteristics, Macedonian. 4. Ethnic conflict—Macedonia. 5. Architecture, Baroque—Macedonia. 6. Furniture, Baroque—Macedonia. 7. Macedonia—Ethnic relations. 8. Macedonia—Social conditions. I. Title.    DR2173.D57 2013    949.7603—dc23 2013014894 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78238-040-5 hardback ISBN: 978-1-78238-041-2 institutional ebook

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

E Contents

List of illustrations

vi

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

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Introduction. Material losses Barok style

1

Chapter 1. From past necessity to contemporary friction: Negotiating minorities through migration

20

Chapter 2. Lost objects, gained privileges

50

Chapter 3. “Modern” masculinities: Emancipation through education

72

Chapter 4. Topography of spatial and temporal ruptures: (Im)materialities of (post)socialism

92

Chapter 5. The Baroque effect: Central Skopje between antiquitization and Christianization

115

Conclusion

144

Index

152

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

E

Copyright © 2013. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Illustrations

2.1. Barok furniture. One of the most popular furniture sets sold by the Barok factory in the last decade (photo courtesy of Barok 2010 catalog). 2.2. Barok L-furniture. The popular k´ošnik set that can accommodate many people (photo courtesy of Barok 2010 catalog). 2.3. Luxurious furniture produced by the Turkish furniture producer Selva Koltuk (photo courtesy of Selva Koltuk 2010 catalog). 4.1. The main street in Kumanovo during Turkish times (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo). 4.2. The main street in Kumanovo between World War I and II (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo). 4.3. The main street in Kumanovo in the 1960s, with the buildings of the Opština and the post office (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo). 5.1. Construction activity on the bank of the river Vardar in Skopje for the project “Skopje 2014” in 2011 (photo by Jane Stojanoski). 5.2. The City Beach, the New “Old” Theatre and the Museum of VMRO (photo by Jane Stojanoski). 5.3. The Portal “Macedonia” (photo by Dragan Krstevski). 5.4. The Bridge of Arts, with twenty-nine monuments of artists from Macedonia (photo by Jane Stojanoski). 5.5. The monument Warrior on the Horse arriving in pieces in the central square Macedonia in Skopje (photo by Jane Stojanoski). 5.6. The fountain and the monument Warrior on the Horse (photo by Jane Stojanoski). 5.7. The central square Macedonia, with the fountain and the monument Warrior on the Horse (photo by Dragan Krstevski).

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63 64 66 99 101

104 118 119 120 122 123 124 125

E Preface

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C

ombining theoretical approaches ranging from anthropological, psychoanalytic, and semiotic to political-economic with ethnographic research on people’s consumption styles, this book takes the reader through an alternative understanding of what has been happening in Macedonia in the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Using ethnicity, gender, and class not as self-evident categories but as constructs shaped by people’s own actions, this book pays close attention to the role of materiality in evoking the sense of loss and longing expressed by so many in “modern”-day Macedonia. By showing the radical political dimension of aesthetics and materiality, and underlining the larger political economic processes, this analysis examines commodities and consumption beyond their apparent role as bedrocks of contemporary capitalism. It reveals that people’s desire for things and objects is nothing new and was prevalent in the previous, socialist, period. By pointing out that the ideology and structure of a political economy does not entirely dictate how people feel or what they desire, this analysis suggests how transformations occurring in the present time are not entirely explicable through the change in economic structure. These changes also have to do with shifting social relations, with a rearrangement of social hierarchies within Macedonia in which ethnic Albanians, who once occupied a very low “place” in this hierarchy, are now moving up the hierarchy due to income from migrant work. The alteration of gender relations, a change in class relations, and a response to the effort in Greece to prevent Macedonia from using that name are all parts of the puzzle in which aesthetics and materiality are the bedrock on which social change becomes visible and comprehensible.

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E Acknowledgments

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T

he writing of this book has stretched over a significant amount of time, and I feel indebted to many people whose individual names I cannot, for practical reasons, include. I am immeasurably grateful to the people in Kumanovo and Skopje who shared their stories with me and allowed me to be part of their world for a while. For their patience and tolerance of my endless inquiries, updates, and subsequent visits, I am immensely indebted. I am especially obliged to Jasmina Zisovska and Nehat Memeti for their friendship and generosity in sharing knowledge of their town and its people. I don’t think I ever told them directly how much they affected my life, changing the way I perceive the world and the people around me. The intellectual influence of Jane Collier and Purnima Mankekar is present on every single page of this book. I will remain eternally grateful to them for showing me how to install a sense of politics and integrity in academic work. Sylvia Yanagisako’s poise, rigor, and ethics remain an intellectual and pedagogical model that I can only attempt to achieve. Many friends and colleagues— Hideko Mitsui, Michael Montoya, Carole Blackburn, Miriam Ticktin, Karen Morris, Erik Foxtree, German Dziebel, Ellen Christensen, and Shelly Coughlan, to name only a few—were crucial in the initial stages of this book, when we shared some turbulent and fun times together. The “Balkan” community in northern California—Nikola Stikov, Svetlana Velkovska, Husein Hadeiba, Almir Mutapčić, Karita Hummer, Ana Bezić, Phillip Guddemi, and Gail Kara—was there for support, sociality, and practical matters related to the transportation of letters and presents (for people at home living in a predigital state of mind). The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle has offered shelter and pleasant sanctuary to work on this book. Günther Schlee, Bettina Mann, Deema Kaneff, Zlatina Bogdanova, Christiane Falge, Michaela Pelican, Jacqueline Knörr, Chris Hann, Nina Glick Schiller, Francis Pine, and many others provided a stimulating environment in which to continue with my provocative research. The Institute for Eastern European Studies at the Free University in Berlin was my next destination, where Ulf Brunnbauer, Hannes

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Acknowledgments

F ix

Grandits, Prof. Holms Sundhaussen, Ms. Eisenblätter, and my colleagues from the New and Ambiguous Identities in South-Eastern Europe project added a crucial comparative perspective to my work. I am especially grateful to Ludmila Cojocari for her support and friendship. The Institute for Slavonic Studies at Humboldt University, where I finally succeeded in rolling up my sleeves and completing this work, has provided a nurturing academic home. Christian Voß has been a great Projektleiter and supported the final editing of the book. Ruža Tokić, Katharina Tyran, Nataša Tolimir-Hölzl, Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić, Simone Rajilić, Aleksandar Jurgec, Filis Hauptmann, Philipp Wasserscheidt, Stefan Gehrke, Marek and Rumjana Slodička as well as the other members of the institute, have been great colleagues. Sarah Green and the COST action have brought an incredible intellectual force to my academic work, and I am grateful for the incisive feedback she provided to my manuscript. I want to thank colleagues from whose work I learned greatly: Ljupčo Risteski, Keith Brown, Ilka Thyssen, Goran Janev, Vassiliki Neofotistos, Carol Silverman, Sevasti Trubeta, and especially Victor Friedman, whose knowledge of the region continuously reassures me that any mistake I made would be noticed and accurately corrected in his rigorous reading. I am so grateful for his meticulous supervision. Olga Demetriou and Chiara De Cesari’s friendship and encouragement had a special role in the final stages of this book. I am grateful to Dragan Krstevski and Jane Stojanoski for sharing their impressions and photographs of Skopje. The political courage of these and the other young members of the Archi-brigade reacting to the Skopje 2014 project leaves me with both a sense of immense hope and of profound defeat as to where Macedonia is heading to. The Berlin circle of friends stretching from Wilmersdorf, Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, but ultimately based in Kreuzberg, continues to be a crucial grounding force in both my academic and private life: from the humble lifestyle and genuine activism embedded in everyday life, to the artistic, brave ways of manifesting intellectualism without fear of tomorrow and existence beyond academic conformism. Several people read and edited the book in its different stages: William (Billy) MacKinnon, Richard Hill, Frederika Bunge, and Phillip Gudemi. The research and the writing of the different stages of this book was funded by the Institute for International Studies (the current Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies), the Humanities Center, the Department of Anthropology, and the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies all at Stanford University, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the German Research Council, and the Institute for Slavonic Studies at Humboldt University. Last but not least, I want to acknowledge my parents, who, although objecting to some of my views and conclusions, have unconditionally supported this

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F Acknowledgments

work. Although my mother did not live to see the publication of this book, I think she would have be proud. My niece Angela has brought so much joy: born at the dawn of the very first ideas of this project, she is now a teenager whose views and impressions of difference, justice, and life in Macedonia are shaped in an entirely different (for better or worse) manner than those we had while growing up in Yugoslavia. I devote this book to my sister, whose sober rationality and intuitive sensitivity have often clashed with my own conclusions, but have, in any case, been a guiding barometer to what is at stake, what I should look at, and how I should talk about it.

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Please note that parts of the chapters here were previously published in the following forms: 2005. “Consuming the ‘Other’: The South-Eastern European Case.” EthnoAnthropoZoom 5:10–38. 2006. “‘Modern’ Masculinities: Ethnicity, Education, and Gender in Macedonia. Nationalities Papers 34 (3): 305–19. 2006. “Rights and Size: Ethnic Minorities, Nation-States and International Community in the Balkans.” Zeitshrift für Ethologie 130 (2): 277–99. 2007. “From Past Necessity to Contemporary Friction: Migration, Class and Ethnicity in Macedonia.” Max Planck Institute Working Paper Series 94. 2010. “Consuming Ethnicity: Loss, Commodities and Space in Macedonia.” Slavic Review 69 (2): 859–81. 2012. “The Ohrid Festival and Political Performativity in the Contemporary Republic of Macedonia.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 14 (2): 229–44. 2013. “‘Wild District’ and Affective Topology of Urban Space in Macedonia.” In Macedonia: The Political, Social, Economic and Cultural Foundations of a Balkan State, eds. Victor De Munck and Ljupco Risteski, 210–231. London: I. B. Tauris.

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E Introduction Material losses Barok style

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A

round the end of the 1970s a private furniture manufacturer from Struga (a town in southwest Macedonia) began producing wood-carved furniture. A decade later, during the period of the postsocialist transition, the proprietor named his company Barok. This name was launched to signify opulence, wealth, and style. At the outset, the main line of production consisted of custom, handmade, luxurious (luksuzni) pieces of carved wood that required lengthy manufacturing time and cost a significant amount of money. These were purchased mainly by the members of the newly rich who had become wealthy due to their dealings in the new market economy (novi bogataši) in post-1991 Macedonia. Gradually, the Barok brand became one of the most sought-after in the country, consumed by people from a wide spectrum of classes and ethnic backgrounds; as the furniture became more affordable and more widely available, it also became less luxurious. However, according to an employee in a shop in Kumanovo that sold Barok furniture, “It gave its owners, nonetheless, a feeling of having something stylish and valuable. And it also allowed those who aspired to climb the social ladder, to feel rich and sophisticated.” Several years later the local government in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, initiated the remodeling of the city center by introducing “Baroque” style. First on their agenda was the rebuilding of the central city park, intending to erect a green labyrinth aligning the paths between the Goce Delčev monument and the “lotus flower” fountain, which opens up onto a larger surface planted with seasonal flowers in different colors in a Baroque pattern, in 2006. In 2007 the government initiated the reconstruction of the former Officers’ House (Oficirski Dom), which had been destroyed during the 1963 earthquake, in its “original” style. Several architects reacted publicly to this decision, arguing against the mismatched styles on the central square. The style, they argued, would not harmonize with that of the most dominant buildings, namely, the central post office, which had been built in the style of “natur beton,” a simple style made of cement in gray or brown shades popular during

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socialism in the second half of the twentieth century, and the marble and colored-glass Telecom building, “suitable for the 21st century.” The deliberations about the neo-Baroque style of the Officers’ House that followed the victory of the right-wing political VMRO-DPMNE1 in 2008 became an introduction to what would become a major project, the “Skopje 2014” (part of the “Macedonia 2014”) project, the purpose of which was the embellishment of Skopje and the other larger urban centers in Macedonia, where new venues and monuments in neo-Baroque and neo- classical style would embellish urban spaces. Throughout the text, I use the terms Baroque and Barok to distinguish between the aesthetic style and the meaning of this style in Macedonia. The founder of the furniture factory indeed chose Barok with an intention to evoke Baroque style referring to style, grandeur and size. This term however acquired life on its own embodying a variety of meanings that can imply wealth, the West, antiquity, taste, etc. It is this wide-spread presence that poses the question: why and how has the Barok furniture and the Baroque style become popular in people’s homes and the most salient style for embellishing public urban spaces in post1991 Macedonia? This book takes on the task of mapping out the multiple traits that enabled the rise of Baroque in postsocialist Macedonia. By doing so I hope to reveal one of the central features of social change, namely, the link between politics and aesthetics operating in both people’s homes and public spaces. The book’s title is deliberately ambiguous, with the intention of raising the question of if there is anything “ethnic” or even “properly” Baroque about the Barok style produced and promoted by either the furniture producer or the ideological project “Skopje 2014” initiated by the government. By examining materiality of private and public spaces, this book demonstrates that the Baroque style (and its Macedonian transcription, Barok) should not be viewed as divorced from or true to its original, the Baroque style prevalent in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century Western Europe. Rather, I propose to view Baroque as an expressive vehicle that “serves as a powerful narrative of cultural experience, useful for dissolving the previous distinctions of ethnic, social and cultural identity, rural and provincial characteristics of collective life and subjectivity” (Lambert 2004: 12). The Barok style of living room furniture and the Baroque architecture introduced by the current political establishment both deal with traces of past systemic legacies and contemporary political-economic realities. The process of aesthetization thus reveals how social differences are related to ethnonational tensions and conflicts of the recent past. These tensions are produced by and reflected through visually appealing ornamentation, and are closely related to affections and the sense of subjectivity. More specifically, Ethno-Baroque identifies Barok as a vernacular interpretation of an aesthetic style where materiality, visibility of power, the agency of the state, and transnational processes merge to produce aestheticized spaces in which ethnic, class,

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Introduction

F3

and gender distinctions are also produced by a free market and a neoliberal economy. After gaining independence in 1991, the market economy introduced in Macedonia initiated the incorporation of a massive number of private firms and companies in the postsocialist years. While this initial wave was not survived by many firms, the Barok furniture factory remained successful. Moreover, Barok managed to introduce a new signifying chain in post-1991 Macedonia aesthetics: Barok represented an “ethnic” brand epitomizing taste for nouveaux riches (or those aspiring to be rich) customers, especially for many ethnic Albanians. That Barok had become so desirable to the new elite is interesting in light of the fact that its style was arguably generic, more or less similar to a style that had existed in other furniture factories in Macedonia and the former Yugoslavia. Before long, Barok opened outlets or supplied its products to the already-existing furniture shops in the larger towns in Macedonia, such as Kumanovo, Skopje, Tetovo, and Struga. The ethnic background of the owner of Barok (Macedonian Muslim), along with his reputation as a successful and honest businessman, continues to attract consumers from different ethnic backgrounds. While many previous analyses have shown the role of materiality, consumption, and commodities in producing social identities and national subjects, this work is unique in its attempt to disentangle issues of space, materiality, ethnicity, and gender, and thus to reveal politics of aesthetics in conjunction with subjective senses of loss and the larger neoliberal processes of a market economy. Grounded in the spread of aestheticized sense of ownership, wealth, and style, the concrete spaces featured in this account, along with the furniture and decorations of the interiors and exteriors, allow analytical possibilities that go beyond semiotic interpretations but address affects such as loss, fear, and threat. The analysis of domestic spaces and contemporary class, ethnicity, and gender, as rooted in and created by material objects, addresses questions about the link between material objects and agency in subverting, contesting, or reinforcing the dominant ideology of ethnonationalism.

Beyond ethnic conflict Much has been written on identity and ethnic conflict in the Balkans in attempts to explain the wars of the 1990s. The existing literature on ethnicity, nationalism, history, and memory has provided many answers for the political and economic changes in the region.2 (Re)definitions of ethnic and national identities and their alignment with different versions of history and memory analyzed by several anthropologists and social scientists have indeed been criti-

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cal in shaping the contemporary characterization of the “new democracies” that have emerged after the Yugoslav socialist federation, and especially the conflicts surrounding the complexity of Macedonia’s independence.3 Moreover, larger ideological contexts in which the West and the Balkans have been mutually entangled and constituted have inspired scholarly works on the Balkans that stress the importance of representation and otherness, viewing the Balkans as yet another Western construction and an embodiment of the West’s negative Other.4 This book continues to engage the literature that addresses issues of ethnicity, nationalism, ethnic conflict, history, and memory, which continues to be one of the most prevalent analytical frameworks for the Balkans and for the events of the postsocialist period. And yet, although ethnicity and ethnic difference serve as analytical lenses, the following study argues that ethnicity should not be treated as a primary analytical category in analyzing nationalism in the Balkans in general, or in Macedonia in particular, regardless of whether it is viewed as primordial or socially constructed. Rather than explaining ethnic differences, I pay close attention to class and gender distinctions produced by a free market and neoliberal economy in Macedonia, and show how these political-economic changes have affected the interaction of Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia.5 From the perspective of explaining Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav realities, this is an innovative approach in light of the fact that the aesthetics of space, objects’ materiality, and the practice of consumption, have rarely been used as primary analytical means to explain the conflicts that took place since the dissolution of Yugoslavia.6 Hence, based on long-term fieldwork among households of various ethnic and class backgrounds in the town of Kumanovo carried out intermittently between 1999 and 2006, and research carried out in Skopje since 2006, I reposition or redefine ethnicity by focusing on issues of materiality, aesthetics, space, commodities, and gender. I aim to show that the contemporary ethnonational tension in Macedonia between the two dominant ethnic groups, Macedonians and Albanians, cannot be explained only by deliberately staged interference or strict top-down imposition by the country’s post-1991 political regimes. Nor can this ethnonational tension be explained solely in terms of everyday practices of consumption and shopping. The nexus between the political-economic context, the materiality of objects, and the aesthetic dimension of everyday practice coupled with the experience and feeling of loss create the conditions of possibility for the ensuing ethnonational tension in the country in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The introduction of a market economy and privatization in 1991 have unquestionably generated massive changes. These changes have led to intensifying class stratification. The domain of consumption thus becomes critical to understanding the recent redefinition of what it means to participate in a group

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Introduction

F5

designated as ethnic Macedonian or ethnic Albanian, and thus to “belong” to a modern nation-state. The range of commodities available with the introduction of the market economy since 1991 is vastly larger than the commodity range in socialist Macedonia, once part of Yugoslavia. The abundance of shopping malls, commercial advertisements in media, and the aesthetization of both private and public spaces with symbols and signs that affect individual citizens or interpellate members of an ethnic group, frame the domain in which we should seek explanations for the growing ethnonational tensions existing between Albanians and Macedonians.

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Commodities, consumption, and material culture in (post)socialist context(s) It has been successfully argued that the domain of consumption is one that has transformed the “nature” of anthropology, initiating the metamorphosis of the discipline (Miller 1995a: 19). Consumption and commodities are central in reexamining the theoretical and epistemological boundaries of anthropology as a discipline. The acceptance of consumption as a significant object for anthropological analysis, according to Miller, marks a fundamental coming-of-age in anthropology—“a final expunging of latent primitivism” (ibid.: 142–43). Indeed, studies of material culture, consumption, and commodities have opened up a new conceptual space for analyzing the agency of both humans and objects. Based on his research in the Baringo area in Tanzania, Ian Hodder (1982b: 38) rejected the view that material culture only reflects, mirrors, or expresses behavior. He argued that artifacts do not have only a passive role: while material culture does reflect and express groups’ identities and their competition, it is evident that “material culture can actively justify the actions and intentions of human groups and that symbols are actively involved in social strategies” (ibid.: 38). The power of symbols and signs, and the ensuing (layered) contexts of meaning (such as rooms, sites, pits, or burials), “seize the muteness of objects” (Hodder 1982b: 5; Hodder and Hutson 2003). Drawing on her research on object worlds in ancient Egypt, Meskell argues that “the Egyptian project of materiality was so complex and central within the lifeworld that its potency could promise to secure the future, and similarly threaten to manifest eternal annihilation” (2004: 10). The agency of the material world thus reveals that the Egyptian construction of the subjects and objects was a complex process in which the two were “porous, overlapping, sometimes indistinguishable entities” (ibid.: 10), with the possibility of objects assuming “new taxonomic roles as beings, deities, oracles, agents, mediators and so on” (ibid.: 6). This new move in archaeology away from environment, economics, motivations, or meanings engages in the dialectics of people and things, where

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subjects and objects are collapsible in particular contexts (Meskell and Pels 2005: 4). Analyses of goods and objects as systems of categories (Douglas and Isherwood 1996) or as landmarks in the process of naturalization of ideology and class positioning (Bourdieu 1984) attempt to go beyond the structure vs. agency divide. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, for instance, is rooted in material conditions at the same time as it is rooted in cognitive orders, as well as social class and divisions. Habitus mediates between these registers, and thus material objects do not merely reflect distinction, but are an instrument of it (Bourdieu 1984; Miller 1987). Bourdieu’s material habitus and Miller’s approach to consumption as practice show that “material lifeworld is shaped by humans, yet equally shaping of human experience” (Meskell 2005: 3). In Reassembling the Social, Latour (2005: 50–52) extends the faculty of subject to nonhuman beings and objects. His actor network theory aspires to provide a networklike ontology where nonhuman beings are part of the social fabric. By introducing the role of the actor (actant) he divorces agency from human beings and insists that anything that is a source of action, and anything that is able to propose their own understanding of action, has a capacity to act (ibid.: 57). Informed by these approaches that take into account the power of objects and works and have introduced the new material culture studies, this book builds on the theoretical reflections of the interrelationships between sociality, temporality, spatiality, and materiality. This approach has offered a valuable alternative going beyond “the symbolic vs. materialist readings of the world” (Meskell 2004; see also Buchli 1999; Buchli, Lucas, and Cox 2001; J. Friedman 1994; Hodder 1982a; Hodder and Hutson 2003; Meskell 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2009; Miller 1987, 1988a, 1993, 1995b, 1995c). While I explore the capacity of material objects to become “agents” or crucibles used by the official state ideology and counterideologies that emerge to contest it, I consider this analysis to be archaeology of the present and “of the recent past” (Buchli, Lucas, and Cox 2001), an “excavation” of the materiality and the meanings of objects and commodities confirmed and/or contradicted by the people who choose to buy and display them. As archaeologists do, I also interrogate the “specific moments of crafting, forging, exchanging, installing, using and discarding objects and their histories in a variety of contexts” (Meskell 2005: 7). In his study of the Narkomfin Communal House in Moscow, Buchli (1999: 10) argues for an archaeological approach given the pace of cultural change in the twentieth century and the rapidly disappearing and changing nature of material records. Twenty-first-century Macedonia similarly requires a multilayered approach that embraces radical “discontinuity, undecidability and conflict” (ibid.: 6). This book embodies a specific historical context and draws its empirical material from the socialist and postsocialist period (1945 onward). Thus, I

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Introduction

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am also party to the discourse regarding the existing ethnographies that have identified consumption as central to the many contradictions of the post–Cold War realities of Eastern Europe. Fehervary’s (2002) analysis of middle-class consumption practices, for instance, reveals that the idea of having “American kitchens and luxury bathrooms” actually informs the sense of “normalcy” among middle-class aspirants in Hungary who measure their own standards of living by contrasting them to “imagined western ones” (Fehervary 2002). Wealthy Russians similarly indulge in building large villas equipped with fancy Jacuzzis, and yet at the same time struggle “with the conditions of achieving meaning … and the intended wholeness and coherence of the objects themselves” (Humphrey 2002b: 134). I concur with those authors who argue that the concept of postsocialism offers valuable theoretical grounds for examining the logic of the post-1991 transition by generating productive discussion on the similarity between postcolonial and postsocialist studies (Verdery 2002), or that the ongoing socialist legacy shapes contemporary political realities (Humphrey 2002a). At the same time I also question “teleological assumptions and evolutionary perspectives surrounding a particular trajectory of change” (Berdahl 2005: 11), especially between the socialist and postsocialist systems. In assessing the role of consumption during socialist and postsocialist periods, one could argue that “capitalist growth depends on consumption in order to absorb the products it creates and generate profits upon which accumulation depends while during socialism a large proportion of the population was hindered from consuming Western goods” (Verdery 2002, 19). Yet, several studies have successfully argued that consumption and consumerism were also significant during socialism. As Fehervary observes, consumerism was central not only to the “normal” nature of postsocialist Hungarian life, but consumption opportunities were also critical to the restoration of the “normal” in post-1956 Hungary as well. “Attempting to appease a hostile populace,” she writes, “the government prioritized improving standards of living by increasing production of consumer goods and housing in exchange for political acquiescence” (2002: 384). Fehervary’s observations in Hungary rightly argue against drastic ruptures between the socialist and postsocialist periods by pointing out that during the socialist period, the construction of a socialist modern consumer equated Western lifestyles and ways of living with “self-value and dignity,” enabling “normal” family life and personhood otherwise impossible under the “abnormal” conditions of state socialism. This new standard of “middle-class fashioning” has remained central to the ongoing social, economic, and material transformation of the country (ibid.). The importance of fashion and style in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), displayed through fashion shows, seasonal clearance sales, the textile and garment industries, and everyday consumer practices, reveal East Germany’s effort to create a communist consumer culture during the Cold War

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that attempted to compete with capitalism on the West’s terms and thus unwittingly produced consumers who ultimately tore down the wall (Stitzel 2005). Moreover, as Reid and Crowley (2000) argue, during the thaw (post-Stalin) period from the mid-1950s onward, consumerism and a moderate fashion consciousness began to be tolerated or even promoted with the intention of signifying modern socialist life. While these accounts reveal the presence and encouragement of consumption practices during socialism, Hann rightly points out that although consumption was encouraged during the heyday of “market socialism,” “only cars, second homes or other luxury goods became permissible items of private ownership and were the objects of feverish accumulation in the decades of ‘mature socialism.’ However, the means of production, the land and most urban housing remained in collective ownership” (1998: 17). Patterson (2001) provides an exciting account on the role of consumption in socialist Yugoslavia. Yugoslav socialism created a unique formula that was considered more democratic and “human” than the Soviet one, “socialism with a human face.” This socialism rested on an ambiguous relationship with consumption and commodities, a relationship that eventually, Patterson argues, led to the destruction of Yugoslavia. Moreover, while many analysts have studied the political economy and the ideology underlying the Yugoslav experiment, the role of consumption during Yugoslavia was strangely neglected by both academics and politicians, despite the turbulence it provoked during the existence of the federation. Consumption was so widely accepted in Yugoslavia that both socialist leaders (such as Enver Hoxha, Nikolae Ceauescu, and Nikita Khrushchev) and officials from within Yugoslavia (such as Milovan Djilas) condemned the Yugoslav “betrayal” of the socialist revolution by “the exclusive coterie of bureaucrats and apparatchiks seduced by commodities” (ibid.: 3). That group, “a real, tangible class for which the good life was more than just a dream, extended beyond top officials of the party” (ibid.: 3), had emerged in the 1960s and had enjoyed Western commodities from the mid-1950s onward; the political climate tolerated and even encouraged the practice of a consumer culture, “one that ultimately drew quite freely upon styles of commerce and communication—that is, methods of distributing, marketing, and especially, advertising goods and services” (ibid.: 5). Patterson argues that the primary factor that made the Yugoslav government encourage consumer-orientated society was the Western commodities brought into the country by the guest workers or the Gasterbajteri (ibid.: 13). Although many Macedonians, Bosnians, and Montenegrins also migrated out of Yugoslavia, as I argue in chapter 1, the percentage of migrating Albanians was the highest, because for many Albanians remaining in Yugoslavia almost certainly meant poverty and financial struggle. The important question is whether the Yugoslav leadership foresaw the unexpected consequences of

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the consumer advantages obtained by the otherwise underprivileged ethnic minorities, such as Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia, through migration (ibid.: 25). The new consumerist class, although officially encouraged, was subjected to fierce criticism by socialist leaders and important intellectuals within the country. But more importantly, the linkages between consumer culture and the national question became the basis for subsequent ethnonational tensions: “to live ‘the good life’—to have a nicer home, or a weekend house, to buy various glamorized consumer goods, to own a decent car, and to shop freely abroad— represented one of the rare factors contributing to a specifically Yugoslavian sense of identity, and thus … helped dampen the appeal of ethnic nationalist politics” (ibid.: 43). Yet, not all areas of the country shared in the newfound prosperity to the same extent. The rise of a consumer culture created popular expectations that could not be satisfied in the poorer parts of Yugoslavia, thereby exacerbating the north/south split.7 Moreover, unequal access to consumption is the key factor that explains why so many Albanians migrated away from Yugoslavia between 1965 and 1973 in a massive campaign organized by the Yugoslav government in cooperation with Western countries. Those who migrated never went back to Kosovo or Macedonia, even after Kosovo received quasi-republic status in 1974. It is clear that the only access to consumerism ethnic Albanians had was through migration. This access was, as I argue in chapter 1, constantly rebuilt and refreshed through personal networks. None of these studies on consumption during socialism and postsocialism, however, examines the conjunction between ethnicity, class, and gender, and their relation to aesthetics and space. The point of my approach is, therefore, to highlight the ethnic dimensions of changing patterns of consumption by understanding the class mobility of one ethnic group and thus to combine class and consumption with notions of ethnicity, where class is defined primarily by the purchasing power of the people involved in this research. The process of rearticulating ethnicity, class, and gender, I contend, is induced by the larger neoliberal context of the post–Cold War world in which the political economy of the free market and privatization inform local subjectivities. The domains of materiality, aesthetics and consumption, therefore, offer a place from which we can understand the complex interactions of multiple actors in Macedonia and see the various economic, performative, and symbolic significance of consumption.

Loss as a subjective, social, and political faculty My methodological strategy—to focus on interior spaces and home decorations and to take them as a point of entry into the discursive reality of post-1991

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Macedonia—although requiring more sensibility and intensive networking, proved crucial in understanding the dimension of loss that would otherwise be perceived as a style of nationalism and racism underlying the way many Macedonians and Albanians view each other. The main aim of this book is thus to offer insight into how affect is produced, especially in the domain in which material objects and people’s identities constitute one another through the experience of loss and lack. The possibility to “decode” and read material objects in their own right, and to juxtapose and contrast people’s ideas of the significance of these objects, allowed me to have a close look into the intimate world of ethnonationalism traversed with intense affects. Buchli’s (1999) theoretical intervention regarding the Narkomfin Communal House in Moscow has been helpful in formulating the experiences of loss and negativity that I encountered in the field. In his analysis, Buchli provides detailed discussion of several social theorists, such as Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, Mouffe, and Strathern, whose theoretical work on conceptualizing voids, gaps, losses, and absences can be seen as productive and constitutive of the process of meaning creation. The residents of the Narkomfin Communal House have managed to develop different strategies of coping with rapidly changing social contingencies by appropriating, resisting, and reconfiguring domestic space. While Buchli shifts his focus from the presence of material culture to that of absence, my task in this book continues to rely on the presence of materiality by examining the grounds in which subjects and objects are embedded and collapsed into one another, and how the feeling of loss emerges in this process. This approach certainly builds on Buchli’s analysis of the residents’ “sensibility that embraces radical discontinuity, ‘undecidibility’ and conflict” (ibid.: 6), all of which are qualities typical for the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In Macedonia too, people and objects are “cemented” by the experiences of loss and lack, which are inevitably tied to the historical context of socialist Yugoslavia and post-1991 Macedonia. The practice of consumption and the goods people are able to afford facilitates much of the past and contemporary experiences of loss and lack. Why is consumption critical in engendering this experience of negativity? As a systematic act of the manipulation of signs, consumption rests not on its consumed materiality “but on its difference which lies on frustrated unfulfilled desire for totality” (Baudrilliard 1988: 32). “Object-signs can proliferate indefinitely, thus making consumption a systematic and total idealist practice. Moreover, object-signs must proliferate indefinitely in order to continuously fulfill the absence of reality” (ibid.: 23), because, as Baudrilliard argues, consumption is ultimately founded on a lack that is irrepressible. Long before Baudrilliard’s theory of the foundational force of lack for the practice of consumption, it was Hegel who argued that a given reality can never be reconciled with its own contradiction (Hegel [1807] 1994). In his Phenom-

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enology of Spirit, Hegel offers a solution to the structural impasse of subjectobject dualism by insisting on a dialectical view of the process of objectification, the mutual construction of subject and object. This is a process that always takes place in a particular historical context, relying on a relationship between human development and external form. This process is never static but always a process of becoming. It is not reducible to either subject or object and rests on the idea of ultimate contradiction (Miller 1988b; Žižek 1989).8 The concept of dialectical contradiction initially formulated by Hegel was further developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who formulated his view of “the subject” by insisting on the importance of lack (Lacan 1998; Lacan and Fink 2002). He argued that lack is constitutive of subjectivity: the birth of the subject becomes possible only through an inherent lack. More precisely, the mirror stage (the formation of the ego or the Freudian Oedipal phase, when the subject undergoes symbolic castration) is the phase during which the subject emerges from absences and is further motivated by a desire for something, which always is construed as a lack. The subject thus becomes aware of her or his qualifying nature of lack and thus develops into a desiring subject. The emerging subject is born into the convolutions of absence/lack and desire through the self-reflexive and socio-cultural demarcation systems of the mirror stage. Desire is constructed as a lack, and through this the subject is fragmented and split within itself (Fuery 1995). Hence, the Lacanian “I” is dynamic, divided, enmeshed, and active within the intersubjectivity of language and desire. The Other—the symbolic order or the domain of language—according to Lacan, is an order of fundamental lack. And yet, language is the place where the subject comes into being and its division and fragmentation is accomplished. The lack in the Other creates a feeling of emptiness within the subject, an intention to always seek to satisfy the void. It is crucial, therefore, to identify how the subject deals with these lacks, losses, and absences, and to acknowledge that the struggle with these contradictions is an ultimately material practice, always accomplished through language.9 Lacan’s theory of subjectivity based on fundamental lack and absence was adopted by Slavoj Žižek, who applies Lacanian concepts to the domains of ideology, politics, and popular culture (Žižek 1989, 1991, 1998, 2002). In his impressive theoretical opus, Žižek explains different social phenomena such as totalitarianism, or new democracies in Eastern Europe, by using Lacan’s concepts of desire, lack, and fantasy. Judith Butler (2006) has also used loss to explain the post-9/11 period and the United States’ “War on Terror,” where the domain of the political is (and should be) infused with grief and loss. These feelings not only leave us passive and powerless, but can also be political vehicles, “a return to a sense of human vulnerability” (ibid.: 30). Butler further argues that

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(m)ost Americans have probably experienced something like the loss of their First Worldism as a result of the events of September 11 and its aftermath. What kind of loss is this? It is the loss of the prerogative, only and always, to be the one who transgresses the sovereign boundaries of other states, but never to be in the position of having one’s own boundaries transgressed … The loss of First World presumption is the loss of a certain horizon of experience, a certain sense of the world itself as a national entitlement. (ibid.: 39)

I sympathize with and am profoundly informed by these highly theoretical arguments on the analytical and political significance of the concepts of lack and loss. Thus, I strive to apply them to the domain of space and materiality in contemporary Macedonia through a theoretical framework that analyzes losses in an ethnographic and systematic manner. I build on Borneman’s (2011) analysis in which he conceives of loss as a fundamental human condition that motivates individuals and groups to seek its redress in the form of violence. By examining the connection between political crime and loss, Borneman describes how Germany and Lebanon deal with notions such as accountability and retribution, but also extends the analysis to questions of accountability and democratization in the United States and elsewhere. Oushakine (2009) has shown how crucial negative affects are for an ethnographic assessment of nationalistic movements in provincial Russia, where trauma can be at the same time a unifying and dividing force for "neocoms" (those who mourn the loss of the Soviet economy and the remonetization of transactions that had not involved the exchange of cash during the Soviet era), veterans of the Chechen and Afghan wars, and mothers of dead soldiers. While Oushakine paints a grim picture that is closely linked to contemporary modernity and global capitalism, my ethnography shows that loss inevitably involves emancipatory practices as well, in which previous aspects of ethnicity or gender can be renegotiated and transgressed. By drawing on materiality, aesthetics, and space, I highlight factors that are frequently missed (and yet are crucial) in explaining ethnic tension, given that losses underlie, induce, and perpetuate ethnic, class, and gender antagonisms, but also provide the conditions for their transgression and subversion.

Kumanovo and Skopje: Sites of changing fortunes A large portion of this book is based on long-term fieldwork intermittently conducted in a small town in northern Macedonia among selected families between 1999 and 2006. It also relies on an analysis of major political and social discourses that have come from and are centered in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, in the period after 2008. The narrative consciously

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acknowledges my own presence as a researcher in the field, and the explicitly interactive aspect of the communication between me and my interlocutors during the course of my research. The constant tensions that I encountered throughout my fieldwork constituted a significant element of this research. As an ethnic Macedonian conducting research during the period immediately following the 1999 NATO bombardment of Milošević’s Yugoslavia, I felt some unease that infused my work with a different intensity: my own ethnic belonging constrained but also enriched my research, especially in making contacts and meeting people. The fact that I was studying at an American university triggered negative reactions from many Macedonians and Serbs who were enraged by the American initiative to proceed with the bombardment in 1999; simultaneously, it opened doors and contacts for my research with many Albanians who believed that Americans had the right perception of the “Albanian situation” in the Balkans. The experience of loss that I encountered during my research stems from several features that mark the new context and the circumstances in which Macedonia has been embroiled since its independence in 1991. The first feature is the loss of class privileges. During the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ethnic Macedonians constituted a disproportionate majority of a privileged “working class” who enjoyed class advantages such as a state-sponsored, comfortable lifestyle. Since 1991, not only have many of these ethnic Macedonians lost state privileges, but they have also witnessed the enrichment of Albanians. Ties with relatives abroad have enabled many Albanians to open small- and medium-sized businesses. This new wealth enjoyed by some ethnic Albanians has transformed the social and physical space between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in contemporary Macedonia, which in turn has engendered strong ethnic tensions. The second feature is the presence of commodities imported from abroad and the ability of newly wealthy Albanians to buy them. This ability has erased what was once a visible boundary between the two ethnic groups. When Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia, ethnic Macedonians considered themselves more “modern” than Albanians, who were then considered “backward and poor.” The concurrent blurring of the class boundaries between Albanians and Macedonians has caused a reconfiguration of the social relations between the two groups. As I will argue in chapter 2, according to Macedonians, Albanians are “getting too close,” “becoming too similar,” and, therefore, not only threatening, but also responsible for, Macedonians having lost their former class privileges. The third feature is the belief held by many Macedonians that Albanians are incapable of being loyal to Macedonia. Although most ethnic Albanians in the country are citizens of Macedonia, it is thought they cannot easily identify with the civil meaning of being Macedonian. On the one hand, this signifier for Albanians (as well as for Macedonians) will always have an ethnic connotation.

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On the other, the proximity of Albania and Kosovo creates strong familial, political, and cultural networks between Albanians living in Macedonia and their coethnics who live outside the country’s borders. Albanians living in Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo are united by the ideology of a common language and, in many but not all cases, religion.10 As one Albanian acquaintance from Kumanovo pointed out, “We are the same nation and the same people. No one should object to the fact that we don’t feel as if we are Macedonians. I don’t want to be called a Macedonian Albanian. That is offense to my Albanian heritage.” The close connection between ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Albania, and western Macedonia, however, appears threatening to the newly independent state of Macedonia, especially since the 2001 military conflict, particularly from the point of view of ethnic Macedonians who have spent decades longing for independence and believe that they have finally achieved a fragile form of self-governance. Continued denial of the legitimacy of various aspects and symbols of Macedonian identity by Bulgaria (language), Greece (name), and Serbia (church) adds to Macedonian insecurities.11 Throughout the course of my fieldwork, I worked closely with ten Macedonian and eight Albanian families. I also conducted a survey of eighty Albanian and eighty Macedonian individuals of both sexes and different age groups, which asked questions about the quality of life during and after the independence of Macedonia. In addition, the survey asked questions about furniture and taste preferences, as well as several general questions, such as education and quality of life. Although I incorporate the results of the survey into the narrative of the book, the crux of the analysis relies on the selected ethnographic, historical, and media sources, which, in my view, reveal widely shared experiences among many Albanians and Macedonians living in Kumanovo and Macedonia. However, I do not want to make generalized statements about the exclusivity of ethnic Macedonians are losing state privileges while ethnic Albanians are gaining newfound wealth this situation being typical, since I have also encountered rich Macedonians for whom the privatization of large state factories has enabled them to accumulate enormous wealth, while many Albanians have also experienced severe impoverishment. Yet, it can be successfully argued that the presence of commodities imported from abroad has erased the visible boundaries that existed during the time of Yugoslavia between the ethnic groups, when Macedonians were more “modern” and Albanians more “backward and poor.” The modern/backward dichotomy affixes different ethnicities in seemingly frozen and already-preconceived social places. The new class proximity between Albanians and Macedonians, therefore, has caused a reconfiguration of the social relations between the two groups: Macedonians view Albanians as getting “too close,” and, therefore, of being both threatening and responsible for the loss of their former class privileges. As I discuss in chapter 3, the loss experienced by ethnic Albanians in

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relation to Albanian women’s emancipation and education incites the fear that women’s sexual freedom will interfere with the “purity” of the Albanian ethnic lineage in Macedonia. Drawing primarily from Laclau and Mouffe’s thesis that “society does not exist” (1985), and from Žižek’s (1989) ideas on the failure of all attempts to achieve social coherence, Fitzpatrick (1995) also reiterates the negativity in studying nations and nationalism by arguing for the “impossibility of nation.” Thus, he paves the way for an analysis of social and political events that is cognizant of the phantasmatic dimension in political discourses. Specifically, national identity becomes a phantasmatic projection that conceals the “impossibility of nation” (ibid.: 67). As long as the social field is structured around some central impossibility, these lacks and voids in the social structure will always be filled by fantasies and stereotypes (Fitzpatrick 1995; Lambevski 1999; Salecl 1995). In this vein, Fitzpatrick’s highly theoretical assertion acquires concrete meaning when translated in the empirical context of this book: the Yugoslav “working-class” ideology during the socialist period and the Macedonian nationalistic ideology after 1991 are both national fantasies that mask the impossibility of the Yugoslav and the Macedonian nations respectively. In Yugoslavia, the “working-class” ideology was never fully “successful,” since there was always obvious class stratification; in contemporary Macedonia, nationalistic politics has also failed to achieve a homogeneous Macedonian state. One could argue, then, that the governmental project to “fix” the non-Macedonian populations as “minorities” and to grant them secondary status is destined to fail. Would not these failures, however, always be contingent on national fantasies that mask the impossibility of a “coherent” nation? In conclusion, by bringing conceptual tools such as loss and fantasy to a research field dominated by political-economic approaches, this book foregrounds the important question of how relationships in Macedonia are mediated by discursive practices of materiality, consumption, and aesthetics. I look at how members of different ethnic groups see each other as individuals who have insinuated themselves in “our” society and constantly threaten “us” with behaviors, discourses, and rituals that are not of “our” kind. Following Salecl (1995) and Žižek (1991), who argue that all images of the Other (enemy) are based on specific fantasies, I argue that ethnonationalism in Macedonia is predicated on stereotypes of the Other that acquire powerful phantasmic elements.

Notes 1. VMRO-DPMNE abbreviation stands for Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (Vnatrešna make-

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

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8.

9.

F Ethno-Baroque donska revolucionerna organizacija – Demokratska partija za makedonsko nacionalno edinstvo). The last fifteen years have given rise to an astonishing production of scholarly and popular literature on Yugoslavia: so-called Yugoslav (or post-Yugoslav) studies. A WorldCat expert search using “former Yugoslavia” and limited to books published in English between 1991 and 2008 yielded over six thousand records. While some of these works only included former Yugoslavia in larger themes such as ethnic cleansing, the number limited specifically to former Yugoslavia is nonetheless still vast. Keith Brown and Loring Danforth were among the first anthropologists to analyze the inherent conflicts of Macedonia’s independence (Brown 1994, 2003; Danforth 1995). There is also a large body of literature by anthropologists, historians, and cultural theorists that has added an important dimension to both the primordial and instrumental approaches, namely, the crucial role of representation and imagination in the mutually constitutive link between the West and the Balkans. (Bakić-Hayden 1995; BakićHayden and Hayden 1992; Todorova 1997). Throughout the book I use Albanians and Macedonians as ethnic labels. It is important to distinguish the difference between ethnic and citizenship usage of these ethnonational labels, especially in the face of the double and ambiguous meaning of “Macedonian,” which is used to signify both ethnicity and citizenship. The ten-day war in Slovenia in June 1991 was the first of the wars that took place in the former Yugoslavia. The wars in Croatia (1991–1995) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and caused massive displacements of population within the territories of the former republics and abroad. In 1999 Kosovo became a United Nations (UN) protectorate after NATO conducted a massive offensive against Milošević’s regime in Serbia. The conflict in Macedonia lasted from February until August 2001, and I provide a more detailed discussion of it in chapter 5. The richer north consisted of Slovenia, Croatia, and the northern part of Serbia, while the remaining republics and Kosovo were significantly poorer, always in need of financial assistance from the richer republics. According to Hegel, there is no difference between the subjective consciousness and consciousness of the object. In his dialectical fashion, consciousness consists of three stages: self-consciousness (immediate, particular consciousness and knowledge), consciousness of the object (or reason), and absolute consciousness (or understanding). The development from stage to stage is circular, since consciousness arrives at its final conclusion (understanding or Spirit) only to realize that it thought there was something other than itself. This dialectical process of going from stage to stage is always constitutive and never merely reflexive (Hegel [1807] 1994). I use language here in a Lacanian sense, as a discursive practice and the place of the “Other,” and not only in its narrow linguistic definition. I also draw on Bakhtin’s (1981: 46) discussion on the otherness of language: [L]anguage for individual consciousness lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes one’s own only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words). Rather it exists in the other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other

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people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own. 10. In 1968, Albanian-speaking intellectuals in Yugoslavia voted to abandon the Gegbased (northern Albanian) standard language that had been in use since before World War II in favor of the Tosk-based (southern Albanian) standard of Albania developed there after World War II. The official unification took place at the Orthographic Congress of 1972. Since that time, the slogan një gjuhë, një komb (one language, one nation) has been used repeatedly to emphasize transnational, ethnic Albanian unity (Friedman 1986). 11. Moreover, events in the political history of Macedonia have prevented its people from maintaining cross-border ties with coethnics in other states, especially Greece and, until recently, Albania.

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References Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakić-Hayden, Milica. 1995. “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia.” Slavic Review 54:917–31. Bakić-Hayden, Milica, and Robert Hayden. 1992. “Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Politics.” Slavic Review 51:1–15. Baudrilliard, Jean. 1988. Selected Writings. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Berdahl, Daphne. 2005. “Introduction.” In Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, ed. Daphne Berdahl e. al, 1–13. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Borneman, John. 2011. Political Crime and the Memory of Loss. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: The Social Construction of Taste. London: Routledge/ Kegen Press. Brown, Keith. 1994. “Seeing Stars: Character and Identity in the Landscapes of Modern Macedonia.” Antiquity 68:784–96. ———. 2003. The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainites of Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Buchli, Victor. 1999. An Archaeology of Socialism. Oxford: Berg. Buchli, Victor, Gavin Lucas, and Margaret Cox. 2001. Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 2006. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso. Danforth, Loring. 1995. The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Douglas, Mary, and Baron C. Isherwood. 1996. The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption: With a New Introduction. London: Routledge. Fehervary, Krisztina. 2002. “American Kitchens, Luxury Bathrooms, and the Search for a ‘Normal’ Life in Postsocialist Hungary.” Ethnos 67:369–400. Fitzpatrick, Peter. 1995. “‘We know what it is when you do not ask us’: Nationalism as Racism.” In Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law, ed. Peter Fitzpatrick. Aldershot, 3–26. UK: Dartmouth Publishing.

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Friedman, Jonathan. 1994. Consumption and Identity. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers. Friedman, Victor A. 1986. “Linguistics, Nationalism and Literary Languages.” In The Real World Linguist: Linguistic Applications in the 1980s, ed. Peter Bjarkman and Victor Raskin, 287–305. Westport: Praeger Publishing. Fuery, Patrick. 1995. The Theory of Absence: Subjectivity, Signification, and Desire. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hann, Chris. 1998. “Introduction: The Embeddedness of Property.” In Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition, ed. Chris Hann, 1–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hegel, Georg. [1807] 1994. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hodder, Ian. 1982. Symbols in Action: Ethnoarcheological Studies of Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodder, Ian, and Scott Hutson. 2003. Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Humphrey, Caroline. 2002a. “Does the Category ‘Postosocialist’ Still Make Sense?” In Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Euroasia, ed. Chris Hann. 12–14. London: Routledge. ———. 2002b. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1998. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton. Lacan, Jacques, and Bruce Fink. 2002. Ecrits: A Selection. New York: W. W. Norton. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso. Lambevski, Sasho. 1999. “Suck My Nation: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Politics of (Homo)sex.” Sexualities 2:397–419. Lambert, Gregg. 2004. The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture. London, New York, Continuum. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meskell, Lynn. 1998. Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. London: Routledge. ———. 1999. Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class et cetera in Ancient Egypt. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2002. Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2004. Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. Oxford: Berg. ———. 2005. Archaeologies of Materiality. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2009. Cosmopolitan Archaeologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Meskell, Lynn, and Peter Pels. 2005. Embedding Ethics. Oxford: Berg. Miller, Daniel. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1988a. “Appropriating the State on the Council Estate.” Man 23 353–372. ———. 1988b. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. London: Routledge. ———. 1993. Unwrapping Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press; New York: Clarendon Press. ———. 1995a. Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies. London: Routledge.

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———. 1995b. “Consumption Studies as the Transformation of Anthropology.” In Acknowledging Consumption, ed. Daniel Miller, 264–95. London: Routledge. ———. 1995c. Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local. London: Routledge. Oushakine, Serguei. 2009. The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. Patterson, Patrick. 2001. “The New Class: Consumer Culture under Socialism and Unmaking of the Yugoslav Dream 1945–1991.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. Reid, Susan, and David Crowley. 2000. Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe. Oxford: Berg. Salecl, Renata. 1995. Spoils of Freedom. London: Verso. Stitzel, Judd. 2005. Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany. Oxford: Berg. Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Verdery, Katherine. 2002. “Whither Postsocialism.” In Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Euroasia, ed. Chris Hann, 15–19. London: Routledge. Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. ———. 1991. For They Know Not What They Do. London: Verso. ———. 1998. “The Metastasis of Enjoyment.” London: Verso. ———. 2002. Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on 11 September and Related Dates. London: Verso.

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CHAPTER 1

E From past necessity to contemporary friction Negotiating minorities through migration

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his chapter provides background for the circumstances under which large numbers of Albanians were “encouraged” or forced to emigrate during the Yugoslav years. It further establishes this process as the basis that later made available the resources for this underprivileged minority to become socially mobile once Yugoslavia collapsed, and the postsocialist period was introduced. Outlining the necessary historical context of the migration policies during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1943–91) and the “place” of Albanian minority during socialist times, I explore the effect of diasporic connections on consumption practices, the visibility and materiality of objects brought in by the migrants, and ethnonationalism in Macedonia in early 2000. This chapter pulsates around the argument mentioned in the introduction, and fully developed in chapter 2, that during socialist Yugoslavia ethnic Macedonians were a privileged “working class” whose members enjoyed a comfortable, state-sponsored lifestyle and other advantages. Since independence, not only have they lost this status, but they have also been confronted with the increasing prosperity of many ethnic Albanians, whose ties with relatives abroad have enabled them to open modest businesses, build new houses, and buy more expensive commodities. The newly acquired prosperity of many ethnic Albanians sets them apart as “the others.” While chapter 2 delves farther into this aspect, this chapter is primarily concerned with the link between migration and ethnonationalism, a link that I argue is mediated through the process of consumption. The subsequent analysis addresses the complicated history related to minorities, the international socialist context, and migration and national politics of the Yugoslav socialist republic before and after its violent dissolution in 1991. I want to stress that former Yugoslavia was not the only place Albanians were discriminated against (see, e.g., Albanians in Greece: Droukas 1998; Green 2005; Lazaridis and Romaniszyn 1998; Lianos, Sarris, and Katseli 1997). Nor

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was this region the only one that has seen the trajectory of poor migrants later becoming the source of wealth, economically surpassing the originally more wealthy residents who did not migrate. This has happened across many parts of rural Europe, both postsocialist and otherwise. Specifically, similar processes took place in postwar Europe when impoverished people from southern European countries such as Greece, Portugal, and southern Italy migrated to northern Europe due to processes of urbanization, with the remittances of the migrants affecting and changing the living standards of the relatives who remained at home (Venturini 2004). Similar trends have been taking place among migrants in the United States and Western Europe who send remittances to the Caribbean and Central and South America (Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001; Stoller 2002). Also, the theme of “earning money abroad” (pečalbarstvo or gurbet) was a massive phenomenon in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century all over the territory of Macedonia, especially in its western parts. This theme featured prominently in literature, folk music, and dances. And yet, the situation that I describe below is particular to socialist Yugoslavia, where the “brother and unity” ideology created a specific ethnonational configuration from the moment the federation was established. In addition to this, I highlight the important role of consumption encouraged by the Yugoslav leadership, and the freedom of movement that, unlike with other socialist countries, allowed for a specific set of circumstances influencing contemporary political, economic, and symbolic relationships between Macedonians and Albanians (see also Brunnbauer 2012).

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The return of the émigrés: A contemporary snapshot I became aware of the importance of Albanian migrants from the very outset of my fieldwork—my arrival in the town of Kumanovo in 1999 was marked by an unbearable heat wave during the month of August. Barely into the first month of my fieldwork in Kumanovo and still in the process of getting to know people and letting them get used to my presence in the town, I felt good about the response I received from Albanians. I assumed that being a Macedonian would help in networking with my own coethnics; the Albanian links at the beginning were more disconcerting for me. It turned out, however, that my acquaintance with a literary critic and a lecturer at Tetovo University paved my way into the Albanian community. This contact reassured me that I could speak openly to Albanians. Luana, a young ethnic Albanian, introduced me to many people who were open, friendly, and willing to share their hopes, anxieties, frustrations, and fears during my first few weeks in Kumanovo. I regularly met with Luana in a café in afternoons during the first couple of weeks of my fieldwork in Kumanovo, a site where Albanians from different generations gathered to socialize.

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Kumanovo, an ethnically mixed town in northern Macedonia nearing the borders with Kosovo and Serbia, defies aesthetic considerations in urban planning. I found the town aesthetically unpleasing, displaying little or no effort to embellish its streets and the public spaces. On the other hand, it reminded me of romantic vacation towns on the Adriatic coast, although without a sea or even a decent river. Kumanovo certainly is not a tourist center, but rather a transit town that people pass by on their way to Skopje or Greece. But this August, especially in the late afternoons and evenings, it was bustling with people, noise, and music until late into the night. Many times during the day, music and car horns announced yet another wedding, or sunet. Many of the grooms or brides were returning from Western Europe or from the United States to be engaged, to marry, to visit relatives, or to attend family celebrations. Luana also confirmed my assumptions that the town’s Albanian population tripled during summer months. Her cousin, for instance, who has a shop next to the café where we would meet, was pleased because during summertime business flourished. The café, which was in one of the main malls in the center of Kumanovo, was full of people who were cheerful, well-dressed, and appeared happy. I saw presents being exchanged among family members who came to meet in the café. It was hard to find a free seat. The mall was built on the place of the former garnizon (garrison), the barracks where the army of the old Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that existed before socialist Yugoslavia, from 1919 until 1939) were stationed in the 1930s. The old building was torn down in 1992 and the mall, along with a tall residential building, was erected. I usually sat at a table on the outside patio, accompanied by Luana and one of her male relatives. My conversation with my companions was often interrupted by someone who approached us to greet them. They hugged according to the Muslim tradition, just nearing their cheeks without actually kissing. “My relatives from Belgium … from Germany … from Switzerland … from Austria … from Turkey.” Many of them arrived in expensive cars with foreign plates, honking loudly, richly decorated for a life cycle celebration with satin ribbons and flowers, and often displaying the Albanian flag—the red background and black two-headed eagle—vigorously waving outside the cars. People pointed out that the festive mood had just returned to the town, given that until recently it was full of refugees from Kosovo who escaped the province in March 1999 when Milošević staged an offensive against the Albanians. During the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, from March to June 1999, many more ethnic Albanians found shelter here, fleeing Milošević’s brutal oppression. Although full of people, the overall mood in the town during the bombardment was somber—the refugees were scared, feeling burdened with the four-month displacement and fearing for their homes in Kosovo. One acquaintance, an Albanian whose five relatives had stayed with his family for

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four months, explained that he and his family had been willing to offer their hospitality to the refugees for a much longer time, despite the economic burden on the family budget. However, the refugees felt uncomfortable about causing hardship for their local hosts, also insisting on contributing to the monthly expenses. Although everyone was apprehensive about the outcome of the crisis, the mood in Kumanovo changed after the refugees started returning to their homes in Kosovo the month following cessation of the “successful” NATO heavy bombardment, which had destroyed many important strategic points in Serbia, when Milošević and the Serbian military withdrew from Kosovo. During the three-month period of the bombardment, Macedonia had received almost 300,000 refugees from Kosovo: 120,000 were stationed in several refugee camps, the largest of which was Stenkovec, with about 100,000 people, as the local TV reported. Around 200,000 people were scattered among Albanian families in Macedonia. Many of them had familial connections, but others were received by their host families because it was “a humane gesture.” The Kosovo province became a UN protectorate with a temporary UN government and more than 40,000 UN troops, officially labeled as Kosovo Forces (KFOR), which had settled in Kosovo and Macedonia. During conversations with ethnic Macedonians, I learned that the Albanian flag had become an indispensable symbol at Albanian festive occasions in the summer of 1999, whether a wedding, a sunet, or an engagement.1 This disturbed many Macedonians, who complained about the visibility of the Albanian flag. “Why do they display a flag of another state—they should go to Albania. This is Macedonia and here we have a different flag,” Vesna said as we sat in the park. She continued: It is a new habit. They feel empowered after the war in Kosovo. They know they have the West on their side, who just manipulates them, but they feel strong: they can stick their fingers into our eyes now. Look at these big houses, expensive cars and goods that they have. It is hard to look at all this. Things were different during Yugoslavia where they knew their place. Everything has gone awry these days. … Soon we will be expelled from our own country and will have to ask them for permission what to do in our own country.

Vesna’s view was common among many Macedonians, who rarely commented on, or even knew, the fact that prior to 1991 displays of foreign flags were illegal or that Albanians were jailed for celebrating 28 November, the day of the Albanian flag. The popular belief among Macedonians was that Kosovo’s independence would be the end of Macedonia, as it not only has a large ethnic Albanian minority but also shares borders with both Albania and Kosovo. Many Macedonians I talked to believed that this combination of an Albanian minority in Macedonia and the proximity of Albania and Kosovo would in-

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evitably lead to ethnic conflict and an all-out war with even larger proportions than the Bosnian war. Evidently, ethnic Macedonians see the ethnic Albanian minority in former Yugoslavia as closely tied to the Albanian motherland. This perception seemed to become particularly strong after events of the spring of 1999. Moreover, many Macedonians were troubled by the presence of the Albanian émigrés who returned to Kumanovo during the summer months. Vasiliki Neofotistos (2012) provides a detailed account of the way ordinary people proceeded with their everyday lives in Skopje during the 2001 conflict, in which ethnonational tensions and relationships of power were reconfigured in the face of the danger of a full-blown war. The mood described in Skopje was not so different from that of Kumanovo, where people from different backgrounds struggled to grasp the political change since February 2001, when the first incident in the village of Tanuševci occurred. More detailed discussion on the conflict, and how its subsequent resolution, the Ohrid Framework Agreement, affects more recent political realities, particularly as related to the “Skopje 2014” project, follows in chapter 5. At this point, however, I want to highlight the intensity of the affects that many of the people in Kumanovo shared: regardless of their ethnic, social, or gender backgrounds, the impending sense of danger and the loss of their previously peaceful life were shared by most of the people I talked to in 2001. The fears spreading among Macedonians were that Albanians held expansionistic aspirations that involved western Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania, and that the armed conflict was “a well-crafted plan orchestrated in collaboration with the international community.” It was obvious that the worsening economic situation contributed to these views of fear and loss. Although the independence of Macedonia brought forth possibilities for opening private businesses, many Macedonians did not have the initial financial support to become entrepreneurs. The Albanians I talked to, on the other hand, believed that the armed conflict was the only way to accomplish an effective integration of Albanians into mainstream Macedonian society. The end of the abuse of human rights, as well as the exclusion from formal representation in government and state institutions, could not be achieved in any other way. The Albanians’ diasporic connections with relatives abroad appeared to manifest strong and coordinated familial solidarity and support. Although numerous studies have shown the complex and fractured relationship between migrants and families staying at home among Albanians in the Balkans,2 it was obvious from the conversations that I had in Kumanovo that Albanians indeed received substantial financial assistance from their relatives abroad. Not surprisingly, many Macedonians felt that the conspicuous presence of Albanians from abroad was a deliberate provocation, not only because of the abundant display of the Albanian flag, but also because of the proudly displayed Western commodities such as luxurious Western cars, clothes and jewelry in the latest

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Western European fashions, expensive cell phones, and other conspicuous and pricey goods. In the initial phase of my fieldwork, I too was struck by how many Albanians lived abroad, how well their diasporic familial networks seemed to function, and how intensively their presence was felt in Kumanovo. Many of the Albanians pointed to the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s as the time of their migration (or of their parents’ migration, since many of the young émigrés where already the second generation, born abroad).

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Migrations during Yugoslavia: A historical necessity From its inception, the Yugoslav government was aware that some republics and provinces were significantly underdeveloped and hence launched an elaborate program to assist these economically impoverished republics and provinces in achieving “socialist modernization.” In the initial years following World War II this program consisted of five-year plans aiming at rapid industrialization and urbanization of the republics. While most of the republics achieved economic growth, Kosovo, portions of Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina remained significantly “underdeveloped.” In the 1960s and 1970s, therefore, the government allowed people from regions in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to migrate abroad and, by working in foreign countries for a limited period of time, improve their economic standing. This migration, seen then as temporary, was government policy specifically formulated to reduce the vast economic discrepancy between the economically impoverished parts of socialist Yugoslavia in the south and the wealthier republics in the north. Many of the temporary workers abroad were ethnic Albanians, who, for structural and cultural reasons, were on the periphery of the Yugoslav socialist society (Baučić 1973). Some accounts explaining the economic disparity between the former Yugoslav republics have cited the divide between the Ottoman and the AustroHungarian empires as a primary reason for the uneven distribution of wealth in socialist Yugoslavia (Lampe 2000; Woodward 1995). The north/south (or west/east) divide accounted for the better economic conditions in the urbanized and more modern Austro-Hungarian Empire than in the Ottoman lands, which had struggled for centuries before the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed. In addition to this argument, it can be successfully argued that the disparity dates from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has to do with Turkey’s relations with “Europe” (Rodrigue 1995; Stoianović 1994). Regardless of the reasons behind the uneven economic situation in socialist Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav government acknowledged the need for a well-developed state program that would lessen the divide between the economically impoverished

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republics and the more affluent republics such as Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia.3 One of the principal reasons for the government’s concern with diminishing the economic divide between the different regions was fear of ethnic unrest, which showed its first signs in 1968 in Kosovo and Metohija, when Albanians protested against Serbian dominance. When asked about their reasons for migration, most of the people interviewed during my fieldwork research with an ethnic Albanian background pointed out that this had been their “inevitable destiny” since the formation of the first Yugoslavia (1921–1939) following the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. They were unanimous in their view that they had been victims of the long Serbian (Slavic) campaign to reduce ethnic Albanian presence in Yugoslavia by forcing them to migrate abroad. Turkey was frequently mentioned as a destination where ethnic Albanians were sent by two Serbian nationalist officials: Vaso Čubrilović and Aleksandar Ranković. Čubrilović was a minster in the government in the 1930s during the Yugoslav Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the first Yugoslavia), and Ranković was a minister of interior in socialist Yugoslavia from 1951–1966. Both identified Albanians as a threat to the unity of the Slav nations and socialist Yugoslavia (Elsie 1997; Smlatić 1978). The intention of the “great Serbian bourgeoisie” to “expel” Albanians by using different violent methods under Čubrilović in 1936 and 1937 caused thousands of Albanians to emigrate to Turkey (Hoxha 1978). Čubrilović also came to an official agreement with the Turkish government to accept an additional 250,000 Albanians. Because of the beginning of World War II, this agreement could not be fully accomplished. The number of Albanians who migrated to Turkey in this period is complicated by that fact that, before the socialist Yugoslav federation and after its establishment, Islam in the Balkans was closely associated with Turkey and Turkish rule.4 Therefore, many of the Muslims who migrated officially were declared as Turks, when they were, in fact, Albanians (Pajazit 1978). While Ranković was a minister of interior during the socialist Yugoslav federation, many Albanians were either forced to migrate to Turkey or did so voluntarily.5 Most of the people who migrated to Turkey were educated intellectuals from urban areas. They soon integrated into Turkish culture and become fully assimilated citizens of Turkey (Smlatić 1978). Most of the Muslims who migrated to Turkey were from Sandzak, Kosovo, and Macedonia.6 The migration of Muslims from Kosovo proceeded via Macedonia, where many ethnic Albanians joined the Muslims and moved to Turkey. The only condition to gain migration approval was to officially declare oneself a Turk. Thus, the official census from 1963 registers the 120,000 Muslims from Macedonia as Turks (ibid.: 7).7 Ethnic Albanians, however, point out that this was a de-

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liberate strategy implemented by Ranković, notoriously known for his antiAlbanian politics, to “cleanse” Kosovo and Macedonia of as many Albanians as possible. After Ranković was dismissed as a minister of interior in 1966, the government attempted to ease the revolt among ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Around this time (1965–66), labor migration policy became part of the larger Yugoslav ideology and was radically different from the “free migration” of the 1950s in its flow and intensity. Initially drafted as “temporary work abroad,” the migration opportunities allowed many ethnic Albanians to work and settle abroad. Since then, migration abroad has unfolded as a complex process with unintended consequences that have directly affected relations between Macedonians and Albanians in independent Macedonia. In addition to self-management (the participation of workers in decision making), brotherhood and unity, and the policy of nonalignment, freedom of movement and the possibility to migrate abroad became one of the principal pillars of Yugoslav socialism. Founded after the multifaceted 1941–45 struggle, the Yugoslav federation was simultaneously a symbol of the antifascist struggle, the people’s liberation war, and a “successful” socialist revolution involving the defeat of the king and the Serbian monarchy. Unmistakably, the initial model of the federation was taken from Soviet socialism. It complied with Stalin’s intent to create a strong Eastern European bloc, cemented with an effective supranational socialist ideology that eliminated ethnic, cultural, and class differences in favor of a cohesive bond transcending nationality. Tito complied with Stalin’s leadership for three years after World War II. In 1948, Stalin decided to position Soviet military troops in all Eastern European countries. The official history in socialist Yugoslavia claimed that when Tito refused to allow Soviet military formations and heavy weaponry in Yugoslavia, despite their acceptance in all neighboring socialist countries, this decision precipitated his rift with Stalin. The ensuing schism had a crucial impact on further developments in Yugoslavia, resulting in decentralization of the economy, greater worker participation in industrial decision making, and the steady curtailment of state functions. These “improvements” on the Soviet model were features of what later would be called “socialist self-management,” which, together with the federal system and the policy of nonalignment, came to constitute the three pillars of Yugoslavia’s political system after the split. Caught between the Soviet and the Western systems, Yugoslavia increasingly nurtured aspects of a market economy, which constituted its link with the West, but, at the same time, maintained many features of the Soviet system. By refusing to be part of Stalin’s bloc, Tito intended to create a unique socialist formula that would blend classical Marxist socialism and Yugoslav specificity. As mentioned above, with its geopolitical location between Western capitalist and Eastern socialist

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blocs, Yugoslavia represented a buffer zone, which, Tito hoped, would balance the two factious political-economic regimes, especially in the post-1968 period (Banac 1989). The break with Stalin encouraged more cooperation with Western European countries. In that vein, the free movement of workers who wanted to migrate was one of Yugoslavia’s most important achievements, distinguishing it from other socialist countries. It was supposed to show to the world that the Yugoslav people had the democratic right to free travel. Migration also connected the federation with the West; Tito envisioned migration as something that would assist Yugoslavia in its pro-Western orientation ( Jončić 1978). More precisely, in addition to the resistance to follow the Soviet socialist model and the intention to position itself between the East and the West, after 1968 the Yugoslav Communist party wanted to maintain the connections with workers’ movements in the countries to which Yugoslav citizens migrated, in an effort to join the international division of labor (ibid.: 6). It can be successfully argued, however, that the initial motif for crafting a migration plan in the 1960s was economic—an attempt on the part of the leadership to reconcile the uneven economic development of the republics. While the migration in the 1950s was explicitly “national” (e.g., “Turks” to Turkey), the labor migration in the 1960s included all nationalities. Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and especially Kosovo (as an autonomous province, part of Serbia), as the most “underdeveloped” regions, received special economic boosts from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, which were economically much better off. Slovenia, for instance, as the most advanced republic in the Yugoslav federation, had a 200 percent higher per capita income when compared to Kosovo (Rusinow 1965). Although migration later became a significant part of the federal agenda, earlier migrations had taken place in the 1950s and early 1960s too. With the label “temporary migration abroad,” these earlier migrations consisted mainly of professionals and skilled workers. These workers came primarily from the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia, who were supposed to acquire new experiences and knowledge during the migration period, bring back the savings, and thus stimulate the Yugoslav economy ( Jončić 1978). Surprisingly, however, prior to 1970, political statements and administrative regulations referring to migration abroad hardly ever mentioned the return and reintegration of migrant laborers. Migration per se was regarded a temporary phenomenon with a cyclical trajectory: departure from the country of origin, temporary residence in the country of immigration, and return to the country of origin. Therefore, numerous Yugoslav institutions and social-political organizations were formed to assist those workers who wanted to go abroad. Along with domestic organizations, the Yugoslav government formed organizations in Western Europe, the United States, Australia, and Canada to facilitate Yu-

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goslav workers’ attachment to Yugoslavia. The main aim of these organizations was to maintain the link between the country of origin and the country of migration prior to their final return to Yugoslavia (ibid.). Soon it became evident that there was a need for a better-developed centralized migration policy, which would pay more attention to recruitment of unskilled, unemployed labor in the less-developed republics and regions. It also became evident that many of the professionals who left would not come back to the country (Schierup 1990). For many professionals, the migrations were not temporary but permanent, and it became obvious that Yugoslavia was losing skilled workers. Hence, with the introduction of economic reform in 1965, the Yugoslav government wanted to regulate migration. Tito mentioned this intention in a speech delivered on 2 September 1965 in Morska Subota when he pointed out that Yugoslavia supports employment of Yugoslav workers abroad and would mediate the conditions of employment in the face of the capitalist employers’ intention to exploit the hard-working Yugoslav workers (Ivanović 2011). As a supplement to this intention to decentralize migration, several important legislations were introduced. The 1965 traveling documents law allowed each Yugoslav citizen to have a right to a passport valid for ten years. The same year, the law on organization and financing of employment was passed, which allowed the Employment Bureau to include available employment abroad. Thus, the Employment Bureau regulated the legal arrangements between Yugoslavia and several Western countries, supervising the travel of Yugoslav workers abroad, regulating the conditions of employment abroad, and providing additional legal and expert services (ibid.). These changes radically altered the intensity of migration from Yugoslavia, allowing large numbers of citizens to migrate. The eighth congress of the Communist Alliance of Yugoslavia (SKJ) in 1967, when the government reformulated its migration politics, officially changed the course of economic migration: instead of including professionals and skilled workers from from the more developed republics such as Slovenia and Croatia, migration policy was directed at people from Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first step toward this was the establishment of a separate Migration Bureau (Biro za Migraciju), to oversee an organized and supervised effort to place workers abroad. This especially targeted nonskilled workers coming from Kosovo and western Macedonia, most of whom were ethnic Albanians (Baučić 1973; Jončić 1978). For example, in 1971 Macedonia contributed 54,433 people to the overall number of migrants from federal Yugoslavia, which was 151,000. In 1973, this number increased to 89,000 people, with most of the migrants originating from western Macedonia, where the majority of people are ethnic Albanians. 54.4 percent of the migrants were agricultural workers, 8.7 percent were industrial workers, 8.8 percent manufacturers, and 8.8 percent dependents who moved with their families (Komarica 1970).

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I mentioned earlier that the new legislations referring to migration in the mid-1960s primarily aimed at resolving the gap between the rich and the poor republics in Yugoslavia. Despite the effort of the Yugoslav government and Tito to improve the economies of the impoverished regions, the economic gap continued to grow. At the same time, the government encountered ethnic and political tensions: there was an uprising of students in Kosovo in 1968, who—for the first time—officially demanded a Kosovo Republic (Kosova Republika). One of the most urgent responses to the Kosovo unrest was improving the economic situation of the province. Migration was central in this project, and the above federal policies should be understood as part of the government’s response to ethnic tensions and economic dissatisfaction in Kosovo (Patterson 2001). While most ethnic Macedonians became involved in massive internal migration—the “village-town” migration—from the 1950s onward, ethnic Albanians could not leave their rural surroundings so easily, because their large households could not be maintained by only one worker’s salary. Rather, their communal farms required the agricultural effort of several members of the household. This was the primary reason for the Yugoslav employment offices to grant preferential treatment to the rural poor and unemployed of the leastdeveloped regions for employment in Western Europe from the mid-1960s onward (Toroman 1978). This preferential treatment greatly accelerated the emigration of ethnic Albanians. The government had an official agreement with a number of Western European countries that accepted workers from the poorer regions of Yugoslavia in which the initial migration fees were paid by the receiving countries. The National Bureau for Immigration of France, the General Institute for Workforce in the Netherlands, the National Bureau of Labor in Western Germany, and the Institute for Workforce Market in Sweden were actively involved in assisting the migration of nonskilled workers from Yugoslavia in the period after 1965 on (Schierup 1990). The introduction of the workers to their new environment was arranged through official bodies, which considerably increased the opportunities for emigration of impoverished, nonskilled workers and people from economically underdeveloped regions in Yugoslavia. The interstate arrangements with France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria enabled the Yugoslav government to receive financial payments from employers (private companies) from these countries to cover the expenses of the initial travel of the workers, and gave preference to collective and organized groups of Yugoslav workers. The arrangement with Germany, for instance, even covered expenses for workers’ training organized in employment centers prior to the trip (Ivanović 2011). Thus, although their migration started relatively late, it reached impressive proportions between 1970 and 1973 (Baučić 1973; Schierup 1990).

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Many Yugoslav citizens who were part of the mainstream socialist society could enjoy a “consumer” lifestyle, which was tolerated and even encouraged (Patterson 2001). I stressed earlier that for many Albanians, however, migration was the only road to economic improvement and consumerism, whereas remaining in Yugoslavia and in their village would inevitably entail poverty and financial struggle. The uneven economic prosperity of the republics affected the rise and the spread of a consumer culture, creating popular expectations that could not be satisfied in the poorer parts of the federation, thereby exacerbating the north/south split. After many ethnic Albanians—considered the country’s most “backward” ethnic group—migrated to Western Europe or the United States, many of them managed to improve the economic status of their households. Moreover, only through migration were they able to share the “Yugoslav dream”: to be a part of a socialist and yet consumer society, accessible to the dominant ethnic groups simply by state employment. Only a few Albanians would have access to this dream if they remained in the country. Their large households, rural lifestyles, and inability to get a good job because of their relative lack of education were structural obstacles that prevented them from partaking in the “Yugoslav dream.” Patterson (2001) reminds us that consumer culture driven by desire for Western commodities and comfortable lifestyles motivated the Yugoslav government’s effort to silence the revolt in the areas populated with Albanians such as Kosovo and western Macedonia, who could not afford the consumer reality. By allowing Albanians to migrate abroad and take active part in the consumer “game,” the Yugoslav government attempted to defer the ethnic tension in Yugoslavia that had been growing since the first demonstrations in Kosovo in 1968. It was evident that, due to the massive economic “backwardness” of Kosovo and Macedonia, migration abroad seemed to be the only path toward consumerism. The new migration policy did not manage to reverse the economic crises in which the Yugoslav society was sinking throughout the 1970s. The attempts to deal with the political tensions also proved inadequate. Although the new Yugoslav constitution in 1974 gave Kosovo a near-republican status, the dissatisfaction of Albanians was not silenced, despite the legal changes and the possibility to migrate abroad. The formal attachment of Kosovo as part of Serbia remained a point of dispute that has not been resolved even today, despite Kosovo’s independence in 2008. This led to violent protests by Albanian students in Kosovo in the spring of 1981, one year after Tito died. The demonstrators claimed that Kosovo should become a republic. Nine died and several hundred people were injured as police firing tear gas broke up a march of at least ten thousand protesters through the provincial capital of Priština (Dobbs 1981). Although the Yugoslav government believed that it had solved the problem of nationalities, of national republics and, in the framework of the Socialist

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Republic of Serbia, the problem of autonomous regions in an effective way, the Albanians in Kosovo argued that they had all the features and characteristics that constitute a nation, and thus Kosovo should become a republic (Miller 2008). The intensity of migration during the 1980s was very high, primarily because of fear of persecution by Serbs and the Yugoslav state. Very few official studies or reliable data exist on the Albanian migrations in the 1980s, because emigration from Yugoslavia abroad was no longer state-sponsored and systematically recorded. It became “illegal,” conducted through informal, familial links, without official permits or visas. Arguably, however, migration continued to rise in the 1990s too. In the face of the political tension in the federation, the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s were marked with the migration of many Albanians because of political uncertainty and fear. An estimated three hundred thousand Albanians left Kosovo in the 1980s and early 1990s, many of whom moved to the United States. In this period, but also prior to the 1980s, many also moved to Macedonia, since Skopje was the de facto “big city” for Kosovo. These émigrés were able to use the familial and personal networks connected to Albanians who had already migrated around the world at the beginning of the 1970s (Qosja 1990). With the official dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, most of the Western European countries began to require visas for citizens of the former Yugoslav republics, making it harder to migrate to those countries. Austria, the last European country to require visas, did so in 1993, so that, apart from those who had family connections outside Macedonia, most emigrants from Kumanovo—the town where I did my research—went there. The strict visa regime introduced for the western Balkans (Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzergovina) after 1993 was a structural predicament for either temporary migration or even short-term visits of relatives. The long lines in front of Western consulates used to consist primarily of Albanians who had relatives abroad (since January 2010 the visa regime has been lifted). In the last two decades, however, the number of Macedonians migrating has risen significantly as well. The economic situation, along with the lack of prospects for a professional future, has induced the desire among many people (especially the young), regardless of their nationality, to apply for a visa, either under a sponsorship of a relative, or as a tourist or exchange student.

“The Albanian question” in historical context In 1944, at the first meeting of the Antifascist Assembly of Macedonia (ASNOM) that took place in the monastery in Prohor Pčinski, Macedonia joined the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia along with Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina—and Montenegro who did so one year earlier,

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on 29 November 1943, in the town of Jajce. For the first time in its history, the republic of Macedonia celebrated officially recognized national distinctiveness, although as a part of the broader unity of the other republics of the Yugoslav federation. As Keith Brown (2003) points out, socialist Yugoslavia had served simultaneously as a guarantor of the existence of the Macedonian narod as one of the peoples of the federation, while giving individuals a state-based nationality that defined them differently when traveling abroad. Although Tito’s official view of the federation was that there should not be any discrimination along ethnonational lines, the structural configuration of the federation, built along the lines of the Yugoslav Kingdom (1918–41), allowed certain republics to have more power and fueled different processes of inclusion and exclusion of minorities, especially those without a republic of their own. The case of the Albanian minority clearly illustrates this process of exclusion and marginalization (Dimova 2006). To understand the ambiguity of Albanian minority during Yugoslavia and in contemporary Macedonia, I propose to examine the larger international context, the legal regulations within the Yugoslav federation, and the historical representation of Albanianness during socialism and in the postsocialist era. These factors have been critical in shaping ethnic and class processes in contemporary Macedonia. It is impossible to provide a straight narrative of the complex political intricacies without a grave violation of the multiple histories and contexts during the Yugoslav federation. Yet, the following section examines the link between Kosovo, Albania, and Albanian minorities in the former Yugoslavia (in Kosovo and Macedonia especially), for it is this link that informs contemporary nationalist views among many Macedonians. By drawing on Brubaker’s (1995) theory of the relational nexus between minorities, nationalizing state, and homeland, we can understand how minorities become “an external other” within the framework of the Yugoslav federation. But we can also discern how post-1991 Macedonia as a nationalizing state feels threatened by the link between Albania, Kosovo, and the Albanian minority in Macedonia. Keeping in mind the historical fact that the Albanian majority areas in Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia were annexed by Albania during World War II, which was experienced as a time of liberation by many Albanian speakers, it is necessary to examine more closely the role Albania has had on ethnonational relations in Yugoslavia (Ellis 2003). The visibility of Albania as a motherland fully involved in the internal affairs of ethnic minority politics during the socialist Yugoslav regime and after the collapse of the Yugoslav federation in 1991 fueled fear of Albanians. This relational nexus between Albania and the Albanian minority in Macedonia and Kosovo also threatens contemporary Macedonia and triggers a constant threat of secession. Kosovo had an ambiguous status in socialist Yugoslavia, as it was an autonomous province with a republic-like status but, nonetheless, was part of Serbia.

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The majority of its population was Albanian-speaking Muslims. Economically, it was the least developed region in the Yugoslav federation. The Yugoslav government tried to invest in Kosovo’s development, and industrial production increased ten times compared to the period before the socialist revolution (before 1945). Electricity was introduced in 90 percent of Kosovo’s villages; 150 kilometers of railroads and 450 kilometers of road and freeways were built. According to Rusinow (1965), the overall cultural progress of the province significantly improved: before the war, 95 percent of the people were illiterate. In 1975–76, however, there were 28,789 primary school students, 79 percent of whom were ethnic Albanians; 62,025 high school students, 69 percent of whom were ethnic Albanians; and 38,640 college students, 65 percent of whom were ethnic Albanians (ibid.). In a report written in 1965 entitled “Other Albanians,” Rusinow points out that by the 1960s the rights of ethnic Albanians in Yugoslavia had improved significantly since the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–41), when 74 percent of Albanians were illiterate, and there was not a single school in which the language of instruction was Albanian. By 1963–64 the Albanian minority of Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro had at their disposal 917 elementary schools, 13 general secondary schools, and 30 vocational, normal, and other specialized secondary schools. Despite the rapid development, the illiteracy rate was 40 percent, with a large percent of school dropouts (ibid.: 10). Yet, Kosovo remained the most impoverished: less than half as developed as Macedonia, Bosnia, and Montenegro, three times less developed than Serbia, four times less developed than Croatia, and six times less developed than Slovenia. In 1971 Kosovo had the highest birth rate in Europe and one of the highest in the world (Hoxha 1978).8 In 1961, the Yugoslav government established a Special Fund for Economic Development of Underdeveloped Regions, and more than 215 billion dinars was invested in the economy of Kosovo. Rusinow (1965) describes the most important projects constructed with these and other funds, including a great open-pit lignite mine and associated thermoelectric plants outside of Priština, two hydroelectric centers, and textile factories. In the report he mentions the most important lead and zinc mines at Trepća, exploited by ancient Greeks and Romans. In the Middle Ages the mines were an important source of the wealth of the medieval Serbian Kingdom. Then, for five hundred years under the Turks the mines lay dormant, only to be rediscovered after World War I when they were expropriated by a British concession. In the 1930s Trepća acquired the status as Europe’s largest producer of lead (ibid.: 19). In his visit to Trepća, however, Rusinow describes a conversation with one of the engineers, who pointed out that the jobs his unit performs include extraction of lead, zinc, bismuth, and silver from the ore, done by 290 workers, whereas in Germany similar procedures are completed by 15 on-site workers. The overall care of the

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workers, however, was excellent, including “frequent free food and snacks rich in proteins and milk products, housing for every worker, some of which consisted of handsome cottages with septic tanks, the firm also owned a summer resort in the Montenegrin coast” (ibid.: 21). Rusinow continues:

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Schools, press, cultural institutions, access to state organs in their own languages, equality before the law and in employment as an ethnic group—in fact, all the classic demands of national minorities in Europe—are theirs. Social equality and equality of opportunity, because they require a level of social and economic development closer to the national average, are not yet theirs and will not be for a long time. As for emotional links with their kinsmen in Albania across mountains, or irredentist sentiments, they would prefer the rule of their own kind in Tirana to the rule of Slavs in Belgrade. (ibid.: 23)9

In 1968, however, three years after Rusinow wrote the report, Albanians in Kosovo staged demonstrations against Serbian repression. Following one of these demonstrations, the 5 April edition of the Albanian daily newspaper Zëri i Popullit (which was an official medium of the Albanian Communist Party), voiced its view that Kosovo was the place where the “chauvinistic policy of the Yugoslav revisionists has been carried out most radically, most fiercely, and with most barbarous means.” It considered Tito’s visit to Kosovo in 1967 as an “idyllic picture of the revisionist reality and a propaganda trick.” Two years after the introduction of agricultural reform, which was followed by the dismissal of Ranković as a minister of interior (who was notorious for his anti-Albanian attitudes and his organized interventions to expel Muslims from Yugoslavia), Tito himself pointed out: “I have been able to notice in Kosovo and Metohija that the majority of specialists and skilled workers are of the Serbian and Montenegrin nationalities and we shall be speaking in vain about equality if the Serbian is taken on in the factory and the Albanian is rejected.”10 The Albanian government made a clear statement after the 1968 demonstrations that “the nationalist disputes, the economic chaos, and other difficulties are not a result of the political leadership at large, but of individual mistakes of the activities of Ranković” (Zëri i Popullit 1968). The newspaper article continued: The actions aimed at denationalizing the Albanians, such as the eviction of the Albanians from their native lands and the seizure of the peasant lands, the mass arrival of Serbians and Montenegrins in Kosovo under the guise of specialists, skilled workers, functionaries, … In the face of the Kosovars’ protests against the low level of economic development of the province, Tito’s economic reforms such as the powerful economic groups from the north to invest directly in Kosovo … would further intensify the colonialist exploitation of Kosovo. (ibid.: 12)

After the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, Albania remained a Soviet protectorate, and officially turned against Yugoslavia. The larger ideological issues in the

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socialist bloc, such as the official split in the Yugoslav-Albanian diplomatic relationship in May 1950, carried strong significance on the local policy toward ethnic Albanians and Kosovo (Artisien 1980). It was in this climate of growing uncertainty between Yugoslavia and Albania when the Albanian leadership reactivated the sensitive issue of Kosovo. In a speech delivered in September 1949, politburo member Tuk Jakova declared that the Kosovars’ right to selfdetermination would only be realized if the Yugoslav people were to overthrow Tito (ibid.: 15). For the first time since World War II, the Albanian leadership raised the question of a union between Kosovo and Albania. After Stalin’s death and the rapprochement of Khrushchev toward Yugoslavia, Albania continued to unleash a more or less uninterrupted anti-Yugoslav campaign that was intensified after Albania broke its diplomatic relationship with the Soviets in 1956, despite the fact that Tito wanted to improve the ethnic Albanians’ status in Yugoslavia. After the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, both Tito and Enver Hoxha, the communist leader of Albania, undertook a concerted campaign to coordinate their foreign policy and strengthen their internal security. Trade and cultural exchanges were resumed in the winter of 1968–69. This formed the basis for the intensification of commercial and cultural relations between the two countries in the early 1970s. The Yugoslav Communist Party encouraged cultural institutions in Kosovo to expand links with Albanian cultural centers and universities. This culminated with Tito’s visit to Kosovo in April 1975, which followed a wave of nationalist unrest in the province earlier that year (ibid.). The province of Kosovo became a key conciliator between the two states, directly affecting Yugoslav-Albanian relations. Kosovo’s growing responsibility, from its former position as promoter of cultural and trade agreements to that of interstate mediator, indicated that although they could never reach an ideological agreement, Yugoslavia and Albania wanted to improve their relations. Hoxha considered himself to be the true defender of the Marxist-Leninist trajectory, and, according to him, Yugoslavia’s socialism was “revisionist with capitalist elements.” Hoxha’s criticism of Kardelj and the Yugoslav self-management was intended to prevent the influence of the Yugoslav system of economic decentralization from spreading into Albania (Hoxha 1978: 27). During Ranković’s tenure as a minister of interior, but also after his removal in 1966, many Serb officials were concerned about the high birth rate in the province of Kosovo and the rapid growth of the Albanian population. On 29 May 1968, soon after the first uprising in Kosovo, Dobrica Čosić, a writer and a member of the Central Committee of the League of the Communists of Serbia, argued that the character of Kosovo should not be determined by its demographic makeup, but by its history. After this statement, he was immediately excluded from the league, but his outburst reflected the growing assertiveness of

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other national groups in Yugoslavia: the Croatian Spring was sparked by the publication of the first two volumes of a common dictionary of Serbian-Croatian/ Croatian-Serbian in 1967 in accordance with the Agreement of Novi Sad initially reached in 1954, but effectively peaked in 1971. The movement focused on the sovereignty of the Croatian people in Croatia and indicated that the national question in Yugoslavia was far from successfully resolved (Miller 2008). After Ranković’s fall in 1966, Tito handed Kosovo over to its Albanian majority. The police forces in Kosovo, previously held by Serbs, were fired, and replaced with Albanians. Other concessions were introduced as a result of the 1968 disturbances: the university in Priština was founded in 1969 as an Albanianlanguage institution; in official business, the term Albanac/Albanski (Albanian) replaced the colloquial Šiptar/Šiptarski, by means of which Tito had attempted to create a separate identity for the Albanian-speakers of Yugoslavia and which had come to be viewed as pejorative.11 The province’s official designation, Kosovo-Metohija, was shortened to Kosovo, since the Albanian Kosovë/Kosova resembled the Slavic designation, whereas Metohija was a Serbian place name whose Albanian form, Rrafshi I Dukagjini (the Plain of Dukagjin), referred to the history of Albania proper (ibid.). Notwithstanding the 1974 constitution that gave Kosovo a near-republican status, the dissatisfaction of Albanians was not silenced. The formal attachment of Kosovo as a part of Serbia remained a point of dispute. This led to the violent protests of Albanian students in Kosovo in 1981, one year after Tito died. The demonstrators demanded that Kosovo become a republic. The Yugoslav army intervened with tanks and heavy machinery, killing a dozen people (New York Times 1981). Why was the idea of a Kosovo republic unacceptable to the Yugoslav federation and especially the Serbian government? What caused Serbia to react with a strong nationalistic redefinition of its role in the post-Titoist Yugoslav federation? What position did Albania hold in this political situation: did Hoxha continue to use the Albanian minority as a tool to interfere with internal affairs in Yugoslavia? Arguably, the year of 1981 marked a significant change in the national politics of the federation. Again, just as it had done after the 1968 demonstrations in Kosovo, Albania used an article published in Zëri i Popullit to voice the official view of the communist leadership, stating that the demonstrations occurred because of the Yugoslav government’s deliberate effort to keep Kosovo continuously underdeveloped.12 Although the Yugoslav government believed that it had solved the problem of nationalities, of national republics, and, in the framework of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, the problem of autonomous regions in the best possible way, more than one hundred thousand Albanians protested in the spring of 1981. The official view of Albania was that the Albanians of Kosovo had all the features and characteristics that constitute a nation:

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[D]o they not live in a compact territory, do they not have their common language, culture, and spiritual make-up, are they not capable of governing themselves, but need the tutelage of someone else, are they so few in numbers that they are not worthy of being raised to the rank of a republic, are there not other federal republics in Yugoslavia so that the republic which the Albanians of Kosova are demanding would make an exception? (Zëri i Popullit 1981)

The Yugoslav leadership, however, continued to fear that if Kosovo became a separate republic, it would soon join Albania and this would cause a collapse of the Yugoslav federation. Indeed, the relational nexus between the Albanian minority and Albania as a homeland inevitably produced apprehension among the Yugoslav leadership that Kosovo would secede and join Albania.13 Another article in Zëri i Popullit, published on 18 May 1981 and entitled “The Status of A Republic for Kosova is a Just Demand,” stresses that Kosovo seeks the status of a republic within the Yugoslav federation. This demand represents the aspiration of a great people, who rightly demand the “status of sovereignty” and not that of a “national minority,” which was unjustly allocated to it in 1943, when the Yugoslav federation was established in Jajce.14 The Albanian demonstrations in 1981 demanded a Kosovo Republic. A strong emphasis was placed, however, on the fact that the demand was not for an independent state but for a republic within Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav officials from Serbia and the other republics, including Lazar Koliševski, who was from Macedonia and was the first president of the Yugoslav federation after Tito died, argued that Kosovo’s aim was to secede from Yugoslavia and form Greater Albania. The official attitude of Albania, with its hard-core LeninistMarxist orientation that strongly opposed both the Soviet and the Yugoslav forms of socialism, retained the classical Marxist line—that every national ideology was wrong and misleading. Yet, officially Albania supported the Albanians’ uprising in 1981, arguing that the Yugoslav national policy was not consistent. A newspaper article in Zëri i Popullit (1981) claimed that the Albanians were deliberately secluded and marginalized. Their subordination was strategically and programmatically maintained not only through the political and economic programs, but also through subtle legal mechanisms. In a series of interviews and correspondence with newspapers and magazines from the former Yugoslavia, one of the leading Albanian intellectuals in Kosovo, Rexhep Qosja, expressed the views and arguments of the Albanian intellectuals in Kosovo who were the leading force in the social movement in the province. They argued that Albanians comprised more than 88 percent of the Kosovo population, and therefore that Kosovo should have the status of a republic. Like most of the Kosovo intellectuals, Qosja stressed that Albanian demands were not centered around independence for Kosovo or the formation of Greater Albania.

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Qosja further argued that Serbia’s struggle against Albanians was conducted in “subtle” ways, such as legal encouragement of blood feuds and vendettas by not imprisoning the murderers and allowing families of the murdered individuals to avenge their deaths; by imposing new toponyms or renaming geographic sites; by changing personal names; and by introducing legal regulations to destroy high walls—a Muslim tradition to fence a house with high walls to prevent any visibility within the yard (avlija) (Qosja 1990). The wall regulation was introduced in 1982, a year after the large student demonstrations in Kosovo, but it did not become effective until 1989 in western Macedonia, especially Tetovo and Kumanovo. Many interviews with ethnic Albanians in Kumanovo revealed their anger at the implementation of this law. Many people spent their savings on building the walls surrounding their houses. As Qosja mentions, the destruction of the walls was a strike against the very “essence” of Albanian ethnicity (ibid.: 68–71). Although officially aiming at aesthetics and urban planning, the law, as many of my interlocutors observed, was aimed at exposing the Muslim (mainly Albanian) population to the state’s gaze and the government’s control and prohibiting an important aspect of the Muslim religion—namely, shielding women from the masculine gaze. The most forceful anti-Albanian campaign, however, was staged by the Serbian intellectual elite, who asserted and clarified the inseparability of Kosovo and Serbia, thus generating a new so-called field of study, the “Mythology of Kosovo” (ibid.: 11). Led by the Serbian Academy of Sciences, the battle of Kosovo in 1389 soon became the cornerstone of the Serbian historiography. The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored numerous academic seminars, publications, and workshops on this theme, culminating with the infamous 1986 memorandum that pushed forward constitutional changes in Yugoslavia and decentralization that would prevent discrimination of Serbs. The Serbian newspapers and magazines staged a long and persistent campaign to show a “forced” expulsion of the Serbian people from Kosovo by ethnic Albanians. Serbian daily and weekly newspapers and magazines, such as Nin, Borba, and Politika, led this campaign with daily reporting, describing the Serbian people’s suffering in Kosovo. The term “ethnic cleansing” was actually introduced in this period, referring to what Albanians were doing to Serbs in Kosovo. In 1988, Milošević became president of Serbia. He committed himself to fully “resolving” Kosovo’s troubles and “relieving the suffering of the Serbs.” The end of the 1980s was marked with proliferation of historical analyses on this topic. Hrabak, for instance, published a book (1988)15 with the central argument that the war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia turned the Albanian people into a tool of the Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Turkish alliance: a support for an Albanian uprising in Serbia was facilitated by these three countries, using Albanians as tools in international geostrategic politics. A simi-

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lar argument has been offered among people and many politicians in Serbia and Macedonia—the West used Albanians to stage a war against Orthodox Christianity. In the same year (1988), Trifunovski, a leading Macedonian geographer known for his elaborate analyses of “ethno-geneses” of peoples living in Macedonia and former Yugoslavia, argued that only 20 percent of the Albanian population in Macedonia are autochthonous (which he defined as living in the area before the seventeenth century). He argued that 80 percent of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia were newcomers who arrived in Kumanovo, Skopje, Struga, Debar, and other towns in western and central Macedonia in the period between 1804 and 1840. The main support for his argument comes from material remains such as deserted villages (selišta), cemeteries, remnants of destroyed churches (crkvišta), and names of villages. These, according to Trifunovski, are “scientific” proofs that corroborate his argument that most of the Albanians in Macedonia are newcomers (ibid.: 107–13). With the subsequent violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, numerous Western social scientists began to show great interest in Kosovo and in Albanians in Yugoslavia. Healy (1997), for instance, captures the mainstream Western view on Serbian policy toward Kosovo at the beginning of the twentieth century. He argues that the rise of the Albanian minority at the beginning of the twentieth century threatened the Serbian elites. In their attempt to destabilize the Ottomans, the Serbs triggered Albanian uprisings, but also caused destabilization of the Serbian population in Kosovo. The Serbian elite thus viewed Kosovo through racist projections of savagery that portrayed Albanians as the “principal Other.” Arguably, this is not an idea invented by the Serbs: it was quite widespread in the Balkan region, with the suspicion of Albanians going back a long way, even considering the fact that Albanians often acted as armatoloi of the Ottomans—irregular militias used to extract taxes from the locals (Green 2005; Stoianović 1994). This projection of “true Albanians” as inferior and “not human” was used as a justification during World War I for the attacks inflicted on the Albanian population in Kosovo, which disguised the contradictions between the ideal projections of a unique Serbian national character and the “modern” and “Western” society the elite aspired to achieve or join (Healy 1997: 169). Therefore, although the official Serbian policy was to help the Serbs in Kosovo who were deliberately subjected to brutal treatment by Albanians, the Serb intervention also created anarchy in Kosovo, which was used to justify declaring a war on the Ottoman Empire. The Serbian policy makers did not focus primarily on enabling peaceful coexistence, because Kosovo was a basis for building cohesion among all Serbs—a place to avenge the Serbian lost battle, and to make the community whole, even at the expense of the Serbs who lived in Kosovo (ibid.).

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The view that Kosovo and its mythology are central to Serbia and to its sense of “wholeness” (ibid.) continues to be used by Western academics, human rights activists, and nongovernmental (NGO) organizations. Amnesty International, for instance, published a report in February 1994 that “between July and September 1993 over 90 percent of Albanians from Kosovo Province were arrested on charges of making preparations for an armed uprising. … by force of arms, the secession of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its unification with neighboring Albania”. The political persecutions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo forced many Albanians to leave Kosovo for Macedonia, or migrate abroad. The events in Kosovo, interference from neighboring Albania, and the reactions in Serbia and Macedonia have shaped not only the treatment of the Albanian minority by the Macedonian state both before and after 1991 but also the social movement of the Albanians themselves. The larger coalition between Albanians from Macedonia and Kosovo, as argued by some, was largely supported by Albania in their social struggle against “Slavic” oppression, particularly voiced by the leader of the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP). This is one of the crucial factors that informs nationalism in contemporary Macedonia, provoking the popular statement that, in mid-2000, many of my interlocutors pointed out to me: “[W]e, Macedonians, have no place to go, whereas Albanians will, soon, have two nation-states: Albania and independent Kosovo.” The subsequent independence of Kosovo in 2008 provoked many fearful and angry reactions by Macedonians I talked to, who asserted that the independence was arranged and supported by the “big powers,” especially the United States. The recognition of Kosovo by Macedonia and Montenegro in October 2008, eight months after independence was proclaimed, was perceived by many people in Macedonia as a response to pressure made by the United States in return for NATO and European Union (EU) membership conditionality.

Conclusion A newspaper article titled “From Brooklyn to Kosovo,” published in the fall of 1998 in the New York Times, describes the role of the Albanian migration to the United States in the Albanian minority struggle in Kosovo (Sullivan 1998). A young Albanian émigré in Brooklyn, frustrated by the refusal of Kosovo’s political leadership to confront Serbian repression directly, left the province in 1989 as part of a wave of more than half a million refugees who sought political asylum abroad, mainly in Germany and the United States. Like most diaspora Kosovars, he donated 3 percent of his income to Rugova’s parallel government.16 After deciding that Rugova’s pacifist approach could not change anything, he

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started sending small items such as two-way radios, flashlights, camouflage uniforms, and bulletproof vests to Kosovo. The three hundred thousand Kosovar refugees in the United States raised one hundred million dollars to finance an armed resistance in Kosovo, effectively sidelining Rugova. To trace exactly how Albanians in Kosovo are connected to their diaspora, Stacy Sullivan, the author of the article, followed the young Albanian from Brooklyn to Kosovo. Their first stop was a visit to the young man’s relative who lives in Albania, near the borders with Kosovo and Macedonia, in the mountainous region of Šar Planina. Full of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) soldiers, Kosovars who recently returned from Germany, Switzerland, and the United States to fight, the house was bustling with activity:

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Stacks of ammunition boxes clutter his courtyard, and pistols and rifles are strewn around inside. Besnik’s wife and daughter spend their day cooking for the soldiers. His two sons, who just returned from studying in Switzerland and Pakistan, shuttle soldiers and guns in his two four-wheel-drives. Six Albanians from Alaska have just arrived with a briefcase of cash they raised among Alaska’s 300 strong Albanian community. (ibid.)

The initial newspaper story became the basis of the subsequent book Be not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America (2004), in which Sullivan describes in more detail how a small group of men in Kosovo, backed by émigrés in the United States, started a guerrilla army that enticed US support for their war and changed the course of history in the Balkans thereafter. The vast body of literature on transnational migration has persuasively argued for the importance of familial networks established between migrants and their relatives who remain in the homeland (Axel 2001; Basch, Glick Schiller, and Blanc 1994; Clifford 1998; Rouse 1991). These circuits have affected the circulation of the economic as well as symbolic capital, transforming “communities,” affecting and deterritorializing class, ethnicity, and gender in unprecedented ways. By drawing on historical analysis and fieldwork material, in the subsequent chapters of this book I extend the arguments on remittances and diasporic connections to examine the rearticulation of Albanian ethnicity through different consumption practices and class identity induced by interaction with the Albanian diaspora abroad. The changes, although historically rooted in the larger Yugoslav experiment, inform contemporary reconfiguration of class and ethnicity. Although the diasporic connections between Kosovo Albanians and Albanians in Macedonia have resulted with different kinds of “success,” in both cases these diasporic circuits inform contemporary nationalisms. Arguably, nationalism in contemporary Macedonia cannot be satisfactorily addressed without examining the crucial variable of migration. Circulation of economic capital between migrants and their relatives who remained in the country plays a key role

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in the free market economy adopted by independent Macedonia since 1991. Empowered by their relatives’ financial support, many ethnic Albanians whom I encountered through my research have become wealthier (or more able to count on financial support from relatives abroad) than ethnic Macedonians, who neither migrated under the federation in such a large scale as ethnic Albanians nor have financial support from family members abroad. Throughout this book I argue that the shift in consumption practices after the independence of Macedonia in 1991 can be traced in the Yugoslav migration policies. The necessity to migrate during socialist Yugoslavia, migration as the only road to becoming a consumer, has allowed ethnic Albanians to take the consumer lead in the post-1991, market-oriented Macedonia. With the dismemberment of the federation, the “Yugoslav dream” disappeared, leaving many Macedonians poor and unable to provide for their basic subsistence, whereas earlier they had been able to participate in the “Yugoslav dream” without having to migrate abroad. This, in turn, has prevented the development of familial diasporic networks that would allow ethnic Macedonians to rely on their relatives’ financial support and a possibility to open private businesses. Albanians, however, have been able to count precisely on such familial support. The reversal of roles and the loss of previous consumer privileges on the part of Macedonians shape their views of, and reactions toward, socially mobile Albanians. The large number of ethnic Albanian émigrés who return to Macedonia during summertime, along with the financial assistance they provide to their extended households, allow ethnic Albanians in Macedonia to become better “consumers” than ethnic Macedonians—more able to share the “dream of globalization” and consume and “enjoy” Western commodities. During socialist Yugoslavia, the picture was different. While Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia, consumption power was a Macedonian privilege. Since 1991, the independence of Macedonia as well as political economic changes, such as the introduction of private property and the market economy, have enabled ethnic Albanians to become upwardly mobile due to financial assistance from relatives who live abroad. The rise of small- and medium-sized businesses owned by Albanians has threatened the economic and class privileges of many ethnic Macedonians, who now accuse ethnic Albanian entrepreneurs of drug trafficking, smuggling, and illegal trade. The waves of “forced emigration” of ethnic Albanians from Yugoslavia has been integral to the “minority struggle” rhetoric of the contemporary Albanian minority. But a close analysis of the migration process reveals that forced migrations under Čubrilović and Ranković were transformed into an “additional measure” of the economic reform in 1965, and the migrations during this time period were mainly based on economic reasons. The subsequent emigration wave in the 1980s was motivated by a different reason, namely, the demonstra-

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tions in Priština in 1981 following Tito’s death. And while many of my Albanian interlocutors from Kumanovo evoked mainly the repressive aspects of the migration abroad—as a means to escape the persistent discrimination of Albanians by the ruling Slavic nations—the relatives who live abroad would often mention to me that they were lucky for having the opportunity to migrate and build more prosperous lives there while also assisting their relatives at home.

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Notes 1. The display of the Albanian flag in the town halls in Gostivar and Tetovo triggered a major incident between the police and Albanians in 1997. This incident resulted with the death of two people and the injury of twenty-five more who protested against the police intervention to remove the flag. 2. Several authors have written on fragmentation and multilayered relationships within and among Albanian diaspora abroad, or on the complex ties with relatives at home (see, e.g, Dahinden 2005, 2009a, 2009b, 2010; Dalakoglou 2010; Korovilas 2002; Pichler 2009, 2010; Sugerman 2004, 2006; Vullnetari and King 2011). 3. Montenegro, as part of the “poor south,” also participated in the labor migration program, especially the population from the mountainous regions. This republic represents an interesting case in terms of interethnic relations, as the relations between Albanian speakers and Slavic speakers are not as antagonistic and tense as in Serbia or Macedonia (Morrison 2009; Pavlović 2007). 4. After the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans between 1371 and 1453, there were massive conversions of Christian populations to Islam in some regions. The tale of forced conversions is, in fact, mostly myth—mainly generated in the nineteenth century to justify Christian nationalism. Incidents of forced conversion did occur, but other factors were more important in most cases. The conversion was most intensive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although conversions were still going on in the nineteenth century, especially in places like Kosovo. Most of the Albanians who live in contemporary Macedonia are Muslims who adopted Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although Albania’s population is religiously mixed, including Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Protestants. Muslims, however, comprise 78 percent of the population. In fact, tens of thousands of Greeks also converted to Islam, but since they were all expelled in 1923, they are treated as invisible (for more see Limanoski 1987; Palikruševa 1965; Smlatić 1978; Sokolovski 1975). 5. Hoxha, for instance, mentions 70,000 Albanians (1978: 31). Albanian official sources state 350,000–400,000 Albanians, pointing out that if these people had not emigrated, the overall Albanian population would be more numerous in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro than in Turkey (ibid.: 32). For more on this, see also Ellis (2003). 6. It is important to note that the wave of migration of Balkan Muslims began after 1878. For more on this see Justin McCarthy’s 1995 book Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims. 7. Victor Friedman (1997) discusses in more detail the changes in declared Turkish and Albanian nationalities connected with the migration of Muslims from Yugoslavia to Turkey, especially the difference between the 1948 and 1953 censuses.

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8. For more on this and on how the economic problems of the 1980s affected the modernization of Kosovo, see the work by Jessica Reineck (1991, 1993). 9. A small trifle was most impressive for Rusinow (1965). A Belgrade publishing house set up a temporary bookshop where the workers could order as many books as they wanted, sign a contract, and have two years to pay for the books via deductions of their wages (ibid.: 21). Rusinow concludes that a genuine and full autonomy was guaranteed the nationalities in whatever concerns their cultural and social survival and development as ethnic groups (ibid.: 22). 10. The newspaper article continues: [ J]obless labor force, which is mainly Albanian, was removed from the region through emigration in Western Germany. To encourage this forced migration, the Titoist arrange also special courses to give the emigrants-to-be some knowledge and information about where they could go and find jobs. Through this method, which is not less barbarous than the one used several years ago when the Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia were forcefully removed and sent to Turkey, the Tito clique are seeking to deprive the regions inhabited by Albanians of their younger generations—the liveliest force to perpetuate itself and the most capable to work. (Zëri i Popullit 1967: 15) 11. Although remarkably close to the Albanian word for Albanian, Shqiptar, the term Šiptar used in the former Yugoslavia in time acquired a pejorative meaning connoting backwardness. A common saying in Macedonia for a bad haircut or bad fashion sense, for instance, is to say that one looks like a Šiptar. 12. The article states the following: Kosovo with its endless mineral resources, its fertile plains … , millions of tons of coal are mined, the thermal power stations generate billions of kilowatts, the molten lead flows in rivers in Trpeche, the chrome, nickel, and magnetite ores are stacked in mountains, trainloads of wheat are transported from Kosova and the fine flavored meat is sold on all the markets of Europe. Why then Kosova is not progressing? These are the questions which students and people of Kosova posed to the Yugoslav leaders and they received bullets in reply. (Zëri i Popullit 1981: 7) 13. In one of its articles, in which the Communist Party of Albania officially voiced its opinion toward the Kosovo affair, Zëri i Popullit foregrounds the inconsistency present in Lazar Koliševski’s book on Macedonia published the same year when Tito died. As the first president of the federation after Tito’s death in 1981, Koliševski stressed the fact that the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation were constantly developing, and reaffirming themselves, and that this was a process that nobody can stop” (Koliševski 1980). Zëri i Poppullit asked why this same principle was not applied to the Albanian nation and province. Is this not the same process of development and affirmation that nobody can stop? Is this process not developing in Kosova, Macedonia, and other parts of Yugoslavia, where more than two million Albanians live? (Zëri i Popullit 1981). 14. The quote from the article is as follows: Messrs Yugoslav leaders, do you want this wound to turn to gangrene? The idea of “Greater Albania” was coined by Fascist Italy of Mussolini, and everybody knows the expansionist-aggressive aims which he and the Ballists had … The Albanians of the “small Albania” of nearly three million inhabitants, or of “greater Albania” of more than five million inhabitants are all Albanians. There is nothing you can do about it, Messrs Serbian chauvinists … The Albanians are one ethnic entity, one people

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whether you call them “small Albania” or “greater Albania.” These Albanians of this Albania, small or greater, who represent a compact people with all the features of a true nation, have not occupied the territories of others, nor have they violated anybody’s rights. (Zëri i Popullit 1981) 15. The title of the book is Arbanaški upadi i pobune na Kosovu i u Makedoniji od kraja 1912. do kraja 1915. godine. Nacionalno nerazvijeni i nejedinstveni Arbanasi kao oruđe u rukama zainteresovanih država (Albanian Influx and Uprisings in Kosovo and Metohija and Macedonia from the End of 1912 until the End of 1915: Nationally Undeveloped and Non-unified Albanians as a Tool in the Hands of the Interested States) (Hrabak 1988). 16. Ibrahim Rugova was the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo and became the first president of Kosovo in 1992. Although Rugova supported Kosovo's independence, he was strongly against the use of force as a means of achieving it, advocating a policy of Gandhi-like passive resistance.

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References Artisien, Patrick. 1980. Friends or Foes? Yugoslav-Albanian Relations Over the Last 40 Years. Bradford, West Yorkshire. Amnesty International Report, February 1994. Axel, Brian Keith. 2001. The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Banac, Ivo. 1989. With Stalin Against Tito. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Basch, Linda G., Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. London: Routledge. Baučić, Ivo. 1973. Radnici u inozemstvu prema popisu stanovništa Jugoslavije 1971. Zagreb: Zadružna Štampa. Brown, Keith. 2003. The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 1995. “National-Minorities, Nationalizing States and External National Homelands in the New Europe.” Daedalus 124 (Spring): 107–32. Brunnbauer, Ulf. 2012. Emigration Policies and Nation Building in Interwar Yugoslawia. In: European History Quarterly, 42(4): 602–627. Clifford, James. 1998. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dahinden, Janine. 2005. “Contesting Transnationalism? Lessons from the Study of Albanian Migration Networks from Former Yugoslavia.” Global Networks 5:191–208. ———. 2009a. “Deconstructing Mythological Foundations of Ethnic Identities and Ethnic Group Formation: Albanian-Speaking and New Armenian Immigrants in Switzerland.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34:55–76. ———. 2009b. “Understanding (Post-)Yugoslav Migration through the Lenses of Current Concepts in Migration Research: Migrant Networks and Transnationalism.” In Transnational Societies, Transterritorial Politics: Migration in the (Post-)Yugoslav Area, 19th–21st Centuries, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer, 249–63. Südosteuropäische Arbeiten. Oldenburg, Germany: Oldenburg Wissenschaftsverlag.

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———. 2010. “‘Are you who you know?’—A Network Perspective on Ethnicity, Gender and Transnationalism: Albanian-Speaking Migrants in Switzerland and Returnees in Kosovo.” In Identity Processes and Dynamics in Multi-Ethnic Europe, ed. Charles Westin et al. 127–47. IMISCOE Research Series. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Dalakoglou, Dimitris. 2010. “The Road: An Ethnography of the Albanian-Greek CrossBorder Motorway.” American Ethnologist 37:132–49. Dimova, Rozita. 2006. “Rights and Size: Ethnic Minorities, Nation-States and International Community in the Balkans.” Zeitshrift für Ethnologie 130:277–99. Dobbs, Michael. 1981. “Yugoslavs Take Emergency Steps In Face of Ethnic Disturbance.” The Washington Post, April 3. Droukas, Eugenia. 1998. “Albanians in the Greek Informal Economy.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24:347–65. Ellis, Burcu Akan. 2003. Shadow Genealogies: Memory and Identity Among Urban Muslims in Macedonia. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. Elsie, Robert. 1997. Kosovo. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. Friedman, Victor. 1997. “Observing the Observers: Language, Ethnicity, and Power in the 1994 Macedonian Census and Beyond.” New Balkan Politics 1:1–18. Glick Schiller, Nina, and Georges Eugene Fouron. 2001. Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Green, Sarah F. 2005. Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Healy, Langdon. 1997. “Serbian Elites, Kosovo and the Kosovo Albanians, 1889–1912.” PhD diss., Indiana University. Hoxha, Hajredin. 1978. “Uzroci, problemi i posljedice migracija stanovništva Kosova i pripadnika albanske nacionalnosti u inostranstvo.” In Iseljeništvo Naroda i Narodnosti Jugoslavije i njegove uzajamne veze s domovinom, ed. Ivan Čizmić, 257–73. Zagreb: Zavod za migracije i narodnosti. Hrabak, Bogumil. 1988. Arbanaski Upadi u Pobune na Kosovu i u Makedonije od Kraja 1912. do Kraja 1915. Godine: Nacionalno nerazvijeni i nejedinstveni arbanasi kao orudze u rukama zainteresiranih drzava. Vranje: Narodni Muzej u Vranju. Ivanović, Vladimir. 2011. “Migraciona politika SFRJ i odlazak na privremeni rad u inostranstvo.” PhD diss, Fakultet za istoriju, Beogradski univerzitet, Beograd. Jončić, Koča. 1978.“Drustvena funkcija iseljeništva u odnosima medju narodima i državama.” In Iseljeništvo Naroda i Narodnosti Jugoslavije i njegove uzajamne veze s domovinom, ed. Ivan Čizmić. Zagreb: Zavod za migracije i narodnosti. Koliševski, Lazar. 1980. Aspekti na Makedonskoto Prašanje. Skopje: Makedonska Kniga. Komarica, Zvonimir. 1970. Jugoslavija u Suvremenim Evropskim Migracijama. Zagreb: Ekonomski Institut Zagreb. Korovilas, James. 2002. “The Economic Sustainability of Post-conflict Kosovo.” Post-Communist Economies 14:109–21. Lampe, John R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lazaridis, Gabriela and Krystyna Romaniszyn. 1998. “Albanian and Polish Undocumented Workers in Greece.” Journal of European Social Policy 8:5–22. Lianos Theodore, Alexander H. Sarris and Louka T. Katseli 1997. “Illegal Immigration and Local Labour Markets: The Case of Northern Greece.” International Migration 34:449–84.

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Limanoski, Nijazi. 1987. Islamskata religija i islamiziranite Makedonci. Skopje: Makedonska Kniga. McCarthy, Justin. 1995. Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press. Miller, Nick.2008. The Nonconformists: Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in a Serbian Intellectual Circle, 1944-1991. Budapest, Central European University. Morrison, Kenneth. 2009. Montenegro: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris. Neofotistos, Vasiliki. 2012. The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. New York Times. 1981. “One Storm Has Passed But Others Are Gathering in Yugoslavia.” 19 April. Pajazit, Nushi. 1978. “Karakter i osobenosti prilaza izucavanju iseljenistva naroda i narodnosti pokrajine Kosova.” In Iseljeništvo Naroda i Narodnosti Jugoslavije i njegove uzajamne veze s domovinom, ed. Ivan Čizmić, 583–93. Zagreb: Zavod za migracije i narodnosti. Palikruševa, Galaba. 1965. Islamizacija na Torbešite i sozdavanje na torbeškata subgrupa. Skopje: PhD diss. University Kiril i Methodius, Skopje. Patterson, Patrick. 2001. “The New Class: Consumer Culture under Socialism and Unmaking of the Yugoslav Dream 1945–1991.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. Pavlović, Srdja. 2007. Balkan Anschluss: The Annexation of Montenegro and the Creation of the Common South Slavic State. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Pichler, Robert. 2009. “Migration, Architecture and the Imagination of Homeland.” In Transnational Societies, Transterritorial Politics. Migration in the (Post-)Yugoslav Area, 19th–21st Centuries, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer. Südosteuropäische Arbeiten. Oldenburg, Germany: Oldenburg Wissenschaftsverlag. ———. 2010. “Makedonische Albaner im Spannungsfeld von Nationsbilding und islamischer Erneuerung: Alltagsperspektiven aus einem transstaatlichen sozialen Milieu.” In Islam und Muslime in (Suedost) Europa im Kontext von Transformation und EUErweiterung, ed. Christian Voß and Jordanka Telbizova-Sack, 195–222. Munich: Otto Sagner. Qosja, Rexhep. 1990. Nezaštičena Sudbina. Zagreb: HSLS. Reineck, Janet. 1991. “The Past as Refuge: Gender, Migration and Ideology among the Kosova Albanians.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley. ———. 1993. “Seizing the Past, Forging the Present: Changing Visions of Self and Nation among the Kosova Albanians.” Anthropology of East Europe Review 11:100–09. Rodrigue, Aron. 1995. “Difference and Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire.” Interview by Nancy Reynolds. Stanford Humanities Review 5: 81–92. Rouse, Roger. 1991. “Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism.” Diaspora 1:8–23. Rusinow, Dennison I. 1965. “The Other Albanians: Some Notes on the Yugoslav Kosmet Today.” Southeast Europe Series 12:1–24. Schierup, Carl-Ulrik. 1990. Migration, Socialism and the International Division of Labour. Aldershot, Avebury. Smlatić, Sulejman. 1978.“Iseljavanje jugoslavenskih Muslimana u Tursku i njihovo prilagodjavanje novoj sredini.” In Iseljeništvo Naroda i Narodnosti Jugoslavije i njegove uzajamne veze s domovinom, ed. Ivan Čizmić, 249–56. Zagreb: Zavod za migracije i narodnosti. Sokolovski, Metodija. 1975. “Islamizacija na makedoncite vo Makedonija vo XV i XVI vek.” Lecture at the Seminar for Macedonian Language, Literature and Culture. Ohrid, Macedonia.

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Stoianović, Traian. 1994. Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Stoller, Paul. 2002. Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Sugerman, Jane. 2004. “Diasporic Dialogues: Mediated Musics and the Albanian Transnation.” In Identity and the Arts in Diaspora Communities, ed. Thomas Turino and James Lea, 21–38. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press. ———. 2006. “The Prespa Wedding and Emigration, 1980–2006/Dasma prespare dhe kurbeti (1980–2006).” In Prespa, Immigration-Repatriation, ed. Ali Aliu. e. al., 42–46. Skopje: Prespa United Us. Sullivan, Stacy. 1998. “From Brooklyn to Kosovo, with Love and AK-47’s.” New York Times Magazine, 22 November 1998, 50–57. ———. 2004. Be not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the US into the Kosovo War. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Toroman, Marija M. 1978. “Različitost i rešenja nekih pitanja privremenog zapošljavanja u inostranstvu i njihov uticaj na iseljeništvo.” In Iseljeništvo Naroda i Narodnosti Jugoslavije i njegove uzajamne veze s domovinom, ed. Ivan Čizmić, 287–305. Zagreb: Zavod za migracije i narodnosti. Trifunoski, Jovan F. 1988. Albansko stanovnšitvo u Socijalističkoj Republici Makedoniji: Antropogeografska i etnografska istraživanja. Belgrade: NIRO “Književne novine.” Venturini, Alessandra. 2004. Postwar Migration Patterns in Southern Europe, 1950–2000: An Economic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vullnetari, Julie, and Russel King. 2011. Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition. London: I. B. Tauris. Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Zëri e Popullit. 1968. “The Albanian Population in Yugoslavia Does Not Allow Itself to Be Deceived and Subdued by Tito Clique.” April 5. ———. 1981. “Why Were Police and Tanks Used Against the Albanians of Kosova?”. April 8.

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CHAPTER 2

E Lost objects, gained privileges

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T

his chapter foregrounds the circumstances under which a resentment of Albanians’ newfound wealth (at least for a certain section of the Albanian population in Kumanovo) among Macedonians translated into a strong expression of suspicion of Albanians in general. This arguably echoes the habit of blaming “the other” for a downfall in status, something that has been noted across Europe, as analyzed by Douglas Holmes, Andre Gingrich, and Hastings Donnan, among others (Donnan 2002, 2010; Gingrich 2006; Gingrich and Banks 2006; Holmes 2000). By providing a detailed account of the experiences of several different households during socialism and after 1991, I underline the specific context and the role of materiality in which this blaming takes place. I draw theoretically on a combination of political-economic and semiotic (symbolic) approaches that not only treat symbols and signs as commodities, but also pay attention to the symbolic agency of material objects with the fetishistic capacity to create affects of loss, inadequacy, fear, and hatred. To explore how the larger politicaleconomic context in contemporary Macedonia is infused with different losses and how these experiences affect everyday life in Kumanovo, I have selected several ethnographic vignettes that in my view reveal widely shared experiences among many people from different class and ethnic backgrounds living in Kumanovo. I do not want to make generalizing statements about ethnic groups and their well-being during socialism and the post-1991 period or argue that the situation described in this chapter is typical, since, as I have already mentioned in the introduction, I also encountered rich Macedonians for whom the privatization of large state factories has allowed the possibility of accumulating enormous wealth.1 Similarly, many Albanians have been affected by the difficult economic situation in the country and struggle with day-to-day survival. Rich Macedonians and poor Albanians, however, appear to have been the “ideal types” prevalent during socialism. It is the new economic conditions since 1991, which disrupted the previous division of power and triggered different views

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of the two groups, that I feel deserve to be analyzed and explained. Rather than using the notion of class as a main analytical lens2, the central focus in the subsequent analysis is on consumer goods as a means to explain the shifting hierarchy of social relations between the two groups in Kumanovo, as well as mutual contestation for a position of respect.

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Wealth gone by: Macedonians remember Yugoslavia Tanja, an engineer and an ethnic Macedonian woman, became a close friend and important interlocutor during my fieldwork, sharing many personal experiences from her youth and current life. Unmarried and in her mid-thirties, she lives with her elderly parents, who were state employees until they retired in 1993. Her father was an economist who held a position as an executive manager in one of the largest and most successful factories in Kumanovo, while her mother worked at the city’s largest transportation company. Soon after Tanja and her older sister were born, her parents purchased their first house, leaving the family home of Tanja’s paternal grandparents. The new house was spacious, with three bedrooms, designed for young families with the two children that the socialist regime encouraged “modern” and “emancipated” families to have, and the district was populated mainly with ethnic Macedonians in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the district was emerging as a space for Macedonian representatives of the elite working class, segregated from the socialist apartment blocs occupied by the less privileged (industry or blue-collar workers and professionals). In his analysis of communal apartments during socialism, Szelenyi (1996) argues that communal apartments in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, although initially intended for workers, became appropriated by blue-collar professionals and the educated layers of socialist society. Kumanovo also revealed that although class played an important role in structuring living practices in the communal apartments in Kumanovo, the central area was (and still is) mixed, with people from different classes, and especially nowadays from different ethnic backgrounds. Albanians were concentrated in Orta Bunar (“Middle Well” in Turkish), the oldest part of Kumanovo, and on the outskirts of town in an area that had been the first residential district when the town was built 250 years ago. Albanians also lived in the villages surrounding Kumanovo: Romanovce, Nikuštak, Matejče, and others.3 These residential divisions by class and ethnicity revealed the complex process of spatial reconfiguration resulting partly from the strategy adopted by the Yugoslav state to provide housing for the “working class.” The unintended consequence of this strategy was a sharp distinction of people primarily along ethnic lines, but not so along class lines.4

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As Tanja grew up, her father progressed in his career. After attaining a managerial position, he was appointed as an official representative of his company in Skopje and later in Belgrade. Although the family had an opportunity to accumulate enormous wealth, they did not do so. During the period of Yugoslav socialism, many people were aware of the discrepancy between the selfmanagement ideology of a classless society and the reality of sharply pronounced class boundaries.5 Tanja’s father handled his discomfort over this discrepancy by adopting a modest lifestyle. The family bought simple, 1960s furniture for their house: a couch and two small armchairs that they still have. Living simply was a matter of principle for her father: he felt he was supposed to be a model for everyone else. According to Tanja, “He carried the burden of the self-management ideology on his shoulders. He felt compelled not to contradict it, and he felt obliged to show its efficacy with his own actions.” Nevertheless, Tanja’s family enjoyed many privileges during her childhood and youth, not only because of her father’s position, but also because her mother, although not formally high up in the company she worked for, was powerful enough to have a strong influence in the firm. Tanja’s mother told me that the Yugoslav times had been “great”; everyone had been equal and there were no differences based on ethnicity. For example, her company had employed several Albanians who were treated just like the Macedonian employees.

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Upward mobility: A contemporary Albanian home One of these Albanian employees was Ramo, the uncle of my closest Albanian interlocutor. Ramo had worked as a mechanic for forty years in the same company as Tanja’s mother. I visited uncle Ramo’s household in early November 2000. The district where his family lived reminded me of a labyrinth, with narrow unpaved streets. I could not see the houses because they were hidden from the street by high walls. Only their red terracotta roofs were visible behind iron gates painted green. Although it was eleven in the morning, the streets were dark—I felt as if I were in a tunnel. There were no numbers on the gates, so I asked one of the children playing in the street to show me Ramo’s house. The boy pointed toward a house at the end of the street and told me that Ramo’s house was the one next to the small shop. When I knocked on the door, Elma, Ramo’s daughter-in-law, opened it, smiling broadly. I was expected, because Ramo’s nephew, who was my friend, had arranged my visit the week before. The yard behind the green gate was not large, but it was obvious that someone took good care of it. There were several plots planted with roses and divided symmetrically by decorative rocks. The footpath in the yard was cement outlined with bricks.

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When Elma and I entered the living room, I was greeted by Ferid (Elma’s husband, whom I had met earlier), his father Ramo, and his mother. Uncle Ramo shook my hand firmly. Looking around, the main items I noticed were the needlework decorations that dominated the room. There were two beautiful handmade lace curtains, woolen hand-woven covers ( jambolii) on the Lshaped sofas, colorful cross-stitched pillows, and handmade lace tablecloths for both the dining and the coffee tables. The only decorations on the walls were two medium-sized tapestries (gobleni) with flower motifs. These were in richly carved plaster frames that had been painted gold. The flat-weave carpet on the floor had a design of pastel rectangular forms in tones of sand and peach. We sat down around the coffee table. Elma immediately disappeared and came back shortly holding a bonbonniére with chocolates (Mozart kugli) and a tray with four glasses of water. “So, you analyze houses, ah?” Uncle Ramo asked me after I finished my chocolate and had a sip of water.

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Well, ours is very modest. We have never had enough money to spend on decorations or expensive furniture. My wife is very skillful with needlework so she made all the nice decorations in the house. First we had a minderlak [a traditional Muslim law bench placed against the walls around a room and covered with pillows or cushions], and then we bought a simple couch from the local furniture store, Treska. What you see now was all bought by my son and his wife when they married. As soon as he got his job and the shop opened, they could afford to redecorate.

When I asked Uncle Ramo about his professional experience in the company, he stressed that he had not been mistreated by his coworkers. “I had a very good professional life,” he said. “I never had any problems with any of my colleagues. I always did my job and pulled my own weight. In forty years, however, I was never promoted. I started as a mechanic and I ended that way, unlike many Macedonians who were promoted.” When I started to inquire further about Uncle Ramo’s experiences in the company, he told me: I really wanted my son to be employed by the company, but all they offered him was the job of conductor. Ferid didn’t want to work as a bus conductor. And why should he, when he already had a college degree. They deliberately wanted to denigrate him, to undermine his college education. For me it was a matter of principle and pride. So I refused to allow him to be employed by my firm. It was very hard to survive with four kids. Ferid is the oldest and I am glad I was able to send him through school. But I couldn’t afford that for the other sons. I have a very bad conscience. I had to send them abroad—to Switzerland as gastarbajteri [migrant workers]. That was the only way they could help the family out. Actually, all four boys went to work there, but Ferid came back, finished college and now looks after us.

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Ferid now teaches in a high school. His three younger brothers live in Zurich, where they have private construction businesses. They help out the family members who have remained in Kumanovo. It became evident during our conversation that the family’s financial status and the material quality of its lifestyle have improved significantly compared to the socialist period.

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The old and the new: Narratives in collision Numerous interviews and the survey conducted of ethnic Macedonians, in contrast, revealed that they considered their lifestyles during socialist times to have been much better. Moreover, since Macedonia’s independence in 1991, many ethnic Macedonians have not only experienced the loss of their class privileges owing to the overall deterioration of the economy in the country and disappearance of state-sponsored, well-paying jobs, but they have also experienced downward mobility. For example, the mother of my Macedonian friend Tanja, who worked in the same firm as Ramo, retired in 1993, approximately a year after her husband, and they live poorly, from one pension check to the next. They have joined the ranks of the penzioneri, impoverished people who have to survive on a meager monthly retirement income that averages 150 dollars per person. Tanja’s parents are able to survive on their pensions only by practicing stringent economic measures. Nor is Tanja able to help her parents, as she can afford very little on the salary of 150 dollars a month that she receives. Tanja is not able to travel, buy books, or enjoy the freedom of living apart from her parents, because she cannot afford to pay rent. One of the ways to be economical was the preparation of large quantities of zimnica, or preserved food, for the winter (zima in Macedonian means “winter”). Tanja told me that the preparation of food has always been a tradition in their family (as in many Macedonian and Albanian households), and had not previously been related to economic problems. Her parents prepared ajvar (roasted, minced, and fried red peppers stored in jars), sour cabbage, eggplants, cauliflower, green tomatoes, and other vegetables. Tanja mentioned that her family has always been very supportive of natural, organic, and homemade food, as in many other households in Macedonia. Now, however, it was viewed more as a necessity characterized by a fear of starvation during the winter, turning into a real obsession. “We have to roast peppers, cut carrots, chop cauliflower for days. I am so sick and tired of this but it seems that for my parents this is so important. They see this as the only way to survive and eat well during the winter.” Many elderly people fear starvation and are apprehensive about the worsening economic situation in Macedonia. Without support from relatives (usually children) or some additional income, elderly people face a grim future. Con-

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fronted with additional stresses due to the country’s unreliable health system, Tanja’s parents—like most people in Macedonia who are in their seventies— fear for their lives. Not only elderly people and pensioners but also those who have jobs experience financial difficulties and feel that their lifestyles have deteriorated significantly compared to during socialist times. Tanja, for instance, explained to me that her life has changed drastically over the last twenty years. Evidently, Tanja has experienced downward mobility, and the past ten years have been the most difficult. Tanja did not have any plans for the summer vacation of 2000. She did not have any savings, and her parents could not help her with expenses. She has not taken a summer vacation in years. Tanja retains precious memories of the summers she spent over ten years in Turkey and on the Adriatic coast in Croatia, how wonderful it was to travel across the former Yugoslavia. But Tanja often interrupted these happy recollections of earlier travels by voicing her views on Albanians, whom she blamed for what she described as the mess that now exists in former Yugoslavia. According to her, things turned bad after the demonstrations in Kosovo in 1981—that was the real end of Yugoslavia. She blamed Albanians for the terrible economic situation—and for the “crisis” affecting young people—“because it is they [Albanians] who bring drugs and guns into the country.” The fact that she was not able to take summer vacations, or simply purchase books or music she likes, made her feel desperate and without hope for the future. Her greatest wish was to “live the way young people live in the West—by themselves instead of staying with the parents even after marriage.” But the possibility of moving out of her parent’s house and living on her own was unrealistic given her difficult financial situation. Her desolate commentaries, full of underlying anxiety, were often interrupted by outbursts of anger and bitterness toward those she held responsible for the overall situation in Macedonia: the politicians, Albanians, and the West, which had supported Albanians in their nationalist hopes. My conversations with Uncle Ramo, in contrast, revealed that he, unlike Tanja’s parents, has few worries about basic subsistence. The pension he receives is, indeed, low, and his wife has never worked, but the fact that Ferid and Elma are living with them and have a solid income from the toy shop has meant that the elderly couple will not be left alone to starve. Uncle Ramo and his wife expect that there will always be enough food to “get through the day.” Furthermore, the elderly couple enjoy a feeling of security due to the fact that their sons living in Switzerland have solid incomes and can be expected to help if need arises. My Macedonian interlocutors often mentioned that the bonds between adult children and parents in Albanian households are very strong and required by tradition, due to “their backwardness and lack of emancipation.” While fam-

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ily members who live abroad are supposed to take care, and indeed many do take care, of those who remain in Macedonia, my interviews revealed that there were conflicts within many households and different interpretations of these obligations, which often ended with a refusal to send any money to relatives in the home country. Ramo’s sons in Switzerland have been “good sons,” as Ramo mentioned, and were sending him money, which assisted their brother Ferid and his wife Elma to open a shop on the ground floor of the family house. As Ferid put it, the brothers’ money was well invested: the shop sells toys and school items such as notebooks, pencils, crayons, etc., and generates significant profit, allowing Ferid and Elma not only to be financially independent but also to have a “good” income that allows them to be well off and plan larger projects, such as remodeling their house or buying new furniture. He also planned to replace the family’s old car. Although Ferid recounted the smart steps he undertook with his brothers’ money, I often also encountered stories of selfish siblings on both sides: the migrants abroad don’t send enough (or any) money, or the receiving members of the household spend the hard-earned money without a “proper investment plan.” Building a house and furnishing it with nice furniture remains one of the top priorities, and opening a private business that would secure income and allow financial success has become a primary aim that testifies to entrepreneurial skills, wisdom, and the need for “long-term care” of the larger household. The close connection between affection for the larger household and fiscal capability became closely intertwined notions. When I questioned the migrants about what they get in return for the support they give their relatives back home, they answered reassuringly that they don’t expect any return, “just a better life for the entire family” (samo podobar život za celata familija). Unofficially, however, I heard of cases where the migrants, especially the daughters-in-law, “broke the tradition and objected to sending money back home but selfishly focused on their children and life abroad.” This stance—that women are threatening to the Albanian tradition—is addressed in more detail in the next chapter.

Accounting for loss Members of once-privileged households like Tanja’s now struggle for survival. This struggle fuels resentment and disappointment among many of the people I interviewed. The memories of the comfortable lifestyle and the social security provided by the strong Yugoslav state during socialist times are fresh and highlight people’s inability to enjoy the same lifestyle they had in socialist Yugoslavia. Evidently, most of the state jobs during socialism were held by ethnic Macedonians. These jobs provided the best benefits in terms of pay and social security (which included medical coverage, housing benefits, vacation, and pensions).

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But the privilege of holding a state job during socialism became a major disadvantage after 1991. Many of the state-owned corporations were privatized and their new owners adopted different treatment of workers. Small and irregular salaries, a lack of good medical insurance or retirement benefits, and the absence of any assistance from unions in purchasing goods on credit (odloženo plakanje) have become a common feature of the employment policies of oncelarge and powerful state companies. The political, but especially the economic, instability in the decade following the independence of Macedonia created intense distrust of the state and disappointment among most of the people belonging to different ethnicities I interviewed. Many ethnic Albanians, however, have proved more successful than ethnic Macedonians in embracing the market economy and starting businesses on their own. Although, on the one hand, some ethnic Macedonians have prospered, and on the other, a large number of Albanians still experience severe poverty and struggle for basic subsistence, poor Albanians have been a common and acceptable part of the social landscape in Macedonia for a long time. It is the recent emergence of very visible nouveaux riches Albanians, who possess expensive commodities that has been the disruptive feature since 1991. A survey conducted in 2001 by the Institute for Sociological, Political and Legal Research in Skopje disclosed that ethnic Albanians in western and northern Macedonia own private businesses and earn more than the employees in the public (state) or NGO sector. This only corroborated the results of my own survey conducted during my fieldwork research in Kumanovo. Rich Albanians, rather than rich Macedonians, are the ones who are viewed as having stolen what Macedonians once used to own. The resentment created among downwardly mobile or economically stagnant Macedonians by upwardly mobile Albanians has been exacerbated by the spatial proximity of the two ethnic groups. The interviews and surveys that I conducted reveal that 75 percent of the ninety ethnic Macedonian households I polled claimed they had a far better life during the Yugoslav federation, especially during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. As I have argued in chapter 1, those years were hard for ethnic Albanians, however. Most of the people I interviewed explained that they had to send family members abroad because that was the only way for large families to support themselves. But the financial resources that emigrant Albanians accumulated during those years changed the lifestyles not only of those living abroad, but also of family members who remained in Macedonia and received financial help from emigrant relatives. Since 1991, small- and medium-sized private businesses have been sprouting up all around Kumanovo and in western Macedonia, where Albanians are concentrated. The financial and practical aid provided by relatives living in the West has allowed ethnic Albanians in Macedonia to establish such businesses. It has also allowed some Albanians to become rich and to display their wealth by purchasing commodi-

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ties such as clothes, cars, and, notably, decorations for the interiors and exteriors of their houses. Uncle Ramo’s house illustrates these changes. Along with the traditional handmade decorations made by his wife, the house now has brand-new furniture and electronics. Ramo’s family never received (nor applied for) an apartment in one of the many socialist-bloc buildings that were the only accommodations open to mechanics. He had four children and the apartments offered by his firm had only one bedroom. “I couldn’t get a house through the firm,” he told me, “only maybe a tiny apartment, but what would I have done with it when there were so many of us.” So the family built a house in the town’s oldest district, Orta Bunar. When first built, the house had only two spacious bedrooms on the top floor, but Uncle Ramo’s son Ferid has since converted these into a three-bedroom apartment. Ferid and his wife Elma also refurnished the downstairs. The living room where we had our conversation now has a k´ošnik (an Lshaped sitting sofa for eight), a nice komoda (a decorative, carved wooden chest placed along a wall in the center of the living room) with a TV and VCR on it, and a wooden cabinet with a hi-fi stereo. The upper floor, where Ramo’s son, his wife, and their children live, was decorated in accordance with the daughter-inlaw’s taste. Elma told me that ever since she was “brought into the household,” they had had a TV, a VCR, and a hi-fi in the room, so that she and her husband could enjoy privacy and be alone. Several years ago, Ferid’s brothers who live in Zurich brought a Nintendo console and a laptop for Ferid and Elma’s children, which they proudly showed me. The material items owned by some Albanians exacerbate the feeling of loss experienced by many Macedonians, who are not able to redecorate their homes or purchase new electronic items. Many of them made their last big purchases in the years immediately preceding the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, when the option of buying on credit still existed. This reversal of shopping capacity has been a major factor leading to many Macedonians blaming Albanians for their loss of class privileges. The symbolic power of commodities owned by some Albanians became even more visible owing to spatial reconfigurations in the town of Kumanovo. In recent years, many Albanians have moved into areas that were previously populated only by Macedonians (or Serbs). These districts, consisting primarily of apartment blocks, were built during socialism for the numerous workers in the well-developed industries of Kumanovo. As explained by Uncle Ramo, not many Albanians were able to live in these apartments, given their large families. But, as I will discuss in the next chapter, Albanian families have been changing, due to the fact that many educated young women no longer want to move into their husband’s extended families, preferring instead to seek a

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separate apartment. As a result, many young Albanian families have been seeking housing in areas previously considered by many Macedonians as theirs. These changes have brought Albanians and Macedonians closer together in the sense that they now share residential spaces instead of sharing only such public spaces as the workplace, the market, or the town’s central shopping district. Only recently have many Macedonians had Albanians as next-door neighbors, giving both Albanians and Macedonians new insights into each other’s living and consumption practices.

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Semiotics of space: “Too close, too dangerous” I met Lela, an ethnic Macedonian woman, through Tanja. They had been close friends for fifteen years. Lela is a medical doctor who works in the local hospital. She is also a single mother of three. Lela’s home is a small, one-bedroom apartment in one of the oldest socialist buildings in Kumanovo, on the main square. Lela obtained her apartment through her ex-husband, who was working for the military. When I asked her if she would be willing to show me the apartment, she was excited. “I love my place,” she said. “It is tiny, packed, and messy, but I adore it.” I went to visit Lela on a Friday afternoon in mid-August 2000. When entering her building, I experienced a strong sense of oppression in the smelly main entrance hall, with its stained walls and dirty cement floor. The oppressive feeling turned into real panic when I entered the elevator, which had not been maintained for a long time. I experienced claustrophobic terror as the elevator made loud creaking noises and shook horribly. In going to visit Lela, I felt as if I were passing through different worlds, going from the busy crowded square full of light and people, through the dark, smelly, and frightening entrance hallway, into the noisy, jumping elevator, and finally arriving at Lela’s apartment, which smelled of fresh paint. The apartment was small, but I immediately noticed how she had indicated her attachment to it through the furniture and the decorative details. There were only a few pieces of furniture: a futon with a metal frame, a coffee table, one armchair, and two komodi similar to those popular in socialist Russia, as analyzed by Svetlana Boym in Common Places (1994). As in Russia, the komoda symbolizes an urban (bourgeois) style.6 And just like Elena Petrova’s kitchen cabinet described by Buchli (1999), I noticed the special value Lela attached to these two pieces of furniture. I was surprised to see them in black. Although I saw the same komodi in many of the households I visited, only at Lela’s place did I see them in black. Above one of the komodi was a mirror in a metal frame, and on it were several Indian copper pitchers, figurines of Buddha, elephants, etc. On the other komoda there were several tiny icons of

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Orthodox Christian saints along with three miniature frames with pictures of her children. In our lengthy conversation, Lela reiterated that she truly adored her place. Here, for the first time, she felt really free. After her traumatic divorce, she found peace in the tiny space, forty-five square meters in size. Even though it was small, she was happy there. She told me that once her children were on their own, it would be a perfect place for her. As a result, she had little to say in answer to my questions concerning the kind of place she would like to have, or how she would decorate it. She liked her apartment the way it was, and she did not seem to mind that she had no money for redecoration. “That simply is not a big deal for me,” she said. “I paint the place every summer, though. It doesn’t cost me much, I can do it myself, and afterward I feel as if I accomplished a major redecoration.” As the two of us were chatting and sipping strong Turkish coffee, there was a sudden noise and the sound of footsteps from the top floor. The noise was so loud that it was hard to maintain a conversation. Lela explained that the sounds were made by her new neighbors—an Albanian couple with four small children who had moved into the building a year ago. Lela became agitated when she started to describe how loud the children were, how cramped their place was, and how they used their balcony to make pita dough and filo pastries and then washed the baking trays on the balcony in buckets. According to Lela, Albanians did not mind living in such crowded conditions. Lela assured me that she did not hate Albanians, but was rather afraid for the future. Because of their fast rate of reproduction, she said, soon there would be more Albanians than “us.” With fear in her eyes, Lela told me that she was afraid she would lose her apartment, her town, and her country.8 Our subsequent conversation was dominated by Lela’s description of the large number of Albanians who had moved into the building over the last ten years. When Lela first moved into the building in the mid-1980s, there was only one Albanian family living on the second floor. But now there were almost as many Albanian families in the building as Macedonian ones. It was obvious from the interviews that Kumanovo was experiencing extensive movement by its residents, especially in the socialist apartment buildings in the central area of Kumanovo that attracted many younger people from different ethnicities. While before 1991 most Albanians had lived in houses in the central district, hidden behind the socialist blocs, “now they are all over the place.” Lela pointed out that quite a few of the families were young, with “emancipated” working mothers who took their children to kindergarten in the morning. She described these families as “normal—just like us.” I often heard ethnic Macedonians talk about Albanians’“inability” to live in a shared space with other people, or to comply with habitation rules in an apartment building, because of “their backwardness and the influence of Islam that

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imprisons people behind high walls.” Lela’s views of her Albanian neighbors differed somewhat from these stereotypes. She described her young Albanian neighbors as “emancipated and civilized” people who could not be distinguished from Macedonians. But she also talked about the presence of Albanians in the building as threatening. Although she loved her apartment when I first visited her in 2000, by 2004 she was talking about her intention to move away from the building, Kumanovo, and Macedonia altogether. Lela obtained a collection of prospects and printouts about possibilities for migration to New Zealand, South Africa, and Iceland. During my last visit in the summer of 2004, she asked me to help her fill out an application form for migrating to Manitoba, Canada. Lela was concerned about the living conditions in Manitoba, but constantly repeated that “anything is better than here—there is no life with them, Albanians.” I observed that Lela was upset not only by having so many Albanian neighbors in her building, but also by the fact that the availability of imported commodities has meant that both ethnicities are able to consume similar items, erasing what was once a visible difference between Albanians and Macedonians. Ethnic Macedonians who once experienced their superiority to Albanians through the possession of “better” material items now suffer from a deep sense of loss and inadequacy. Their loss is both visibly real and materially actualized. Due to growing wealth, some ethnic Albanians are now able to purchase and own commodities and material objects coveted by ethnic Macedonians, who have lost both class advantages and purchasing power. Lela’s Albanian neighbors, for example, had luxurious cars; her next-door neighbor drove a BMW, and her upstairs neighbor drove an Opel Astra. Indeed, one of the main things Lela missed and craved was a car. She could not afford a new car after she had to sell her old Peugeot 205 a few years ago because she needed money to support her family. Her salary from the hospital, where she was a medical doctor, was 18,000 denari (250 dollars) per month. Her exhusband’s monthly alimony was 50 dollars. She received some financial help from her mother, who would buy and cook food for the children while Lela was at work, but nothing more. Lela, like Tanja, told me wonderful stories of the summer vacations she and Tanja had taken in the 1980s. She remembered the joy of having had a car at twenty, the pleasure of shopping for new clothes in Greece or Belgrade, and the excitement of going skiing in Slovenia or Bulgaria. The commodities owned by her neighbors made Lela feel like an incompetent mother and a failure. Sharing the building with Albanians who seemed to be richer and to own more expensive commodities triggered feelings of loss, envy, and inadequacy, but it also was a reason for feeling superior to her neighbors. Despite their economic wealth, she felt, these Albanians were and would remain backward and on a “lower level of civilization” than she. The tension .

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between economic and symbolic capital became evident among Macedonians, like Lela, who had lost their earlier lifestyle. Lela drew on her memories of the past, which were framed in terms of a cosmopolitan lifestyle, travel, education, openness, and freedom. She viewed her rich Albanian neighbors as less civilized and as spiritually poor because “money cannot buy spirit.” Yet the fact that Albanians such as these are able to consume and display expensive commodities such as clothes, cars, mobile phones, jewelry, etc., has become a disturbing feature for many Macedonians, as indicated by Lela’s frequent comments and her detailed descriptions of the items belonging to her Albanian neighbors.

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Commodities exposed In the course of my fieldwork, I observed the power of material objects to change people’s social perceptions. From previously accepted views of Albanians as impoverished and as less “civilized” than Macedonians, due to their lack of a sense of style and fashion, Albanians were coming to be seen as wealthy and as able to purchase commodities unavailable to impoverished Macedonians. In the following section I analyze the process in which some Albanians are now acting more like some Macedonians, thus diminishing the social distance between “them” and “us.” I discuss how some Albanians themselves are thinking about the commodities they buy—i.e., how those commodities are making them more like some Macedonians—and about the fear this engenders in these ethnic Macedonians. Artem is a wealthy Albanian who owns three shops that sell tractor parts. His brother, who was living in Belgium, helped him to start his business by giving him a loan and by introducing him to several producers from Western Europe. Later, relatives from Turkey helped Artem to expand his import business. In time, he started importing goods from Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine as well. Within seven years, his business had grown to become one of the leading tractor businesses, not only in Kumanovo, but in the entire country as well. The stores were patronized by ethnic Macedonians, Roma, Turks, and Serbs, as well as Albanians, precisely because they offered the best range of choices of quality goods. The rural areas surrounding Kumanovo are heavily agricultural. As a result, Artem’s business was flourishing. With two stores in Kumanovo, as well as one in Skopje, his family was a leading representative of the nouveaux riches in town. When I interviewed him, Artem was very busy with the preparations for his daughter Mersiha’s wedding. Our entire conversation focused on the upcoming event. I immediately sensed his investment in the preparations, especially his pride in providing a rich dowry for his daughter. He had purchased furniture for her bedroom from the most fashionable furniture store in Kumanovo,

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where most of the pieces are imported from Turkey or Saudi Arabia and reflect a trendy neo-Baroque style. This type of furniture is usually copied from the Biedermeier or Louis XVI styles. One of the most popular living room sets is produced by the Barok company (figure 2.1). The set consists of a love seat, armchairs, and the inevitable ´ošnik. In the more luxurious and expensive edition, the wooden parts are usually the color of dark wood, white, or gold. The fabric is usually pink, green, or red brocade, or velvet with flower designs. This style of furniture features the richly gilded appearance of the wood, the strong colors of the shiny textiles, and the large size of the pieces. Most owners of the fancy furniture stores where such furniture could be bought are ethnic Albanians, and eleven out of thirteen furniture retailers that I interviewed started their businesses with help from relatives who live abroad. During the course of my fieldwork, Artem’s daughter Mersiha and her fiancé became some of my closest Albanian acquaintances. In the days preceding the wedding, I witnessed Mersiha’s extremely rich dowry, which was just as her father had described. Mersiha was bringing many new items into her future husband’s house, such as a new washing machine, a new dishwasher, a new vacuum cleaner, hundreds of pieces of needlework (tablecloths, pillowcases, bedsheets, blankets, duvet covers), porcelain pots for the kitchen, several sets of crystal glasses in different shapes, tapestries, and a ceramic wall clock with

Figure 2.1. Barok furniture. One of the most popular furniture sets sold by the Barok factory in the last decade (photo courtesy of Barok 2010 catalog).

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Quranic scripture on it. The personal wardrobe her father bought for her included twenty-two pairs of shoes in different colors with matching handbags, several dozens of new dresses, and more. Mersiha’s fiancé, Adnan, was from a much poorer family, one that could not afford to redecorate the house for the new couple. But Adnan did manage to find alternative ways to buy new furniture at large discounts. With assistance from his future father-in-law, Adnan bought two huge ´ošnici that could seat sixteen to eighteen people for the living room (salon) and the family room (figure 2.2). He also bought a new wooden dining table and chairs for the salon, new carpets, new komodi, a new stove for the kitchen, and other items. In my conversations with Adnan, he often mentioned that he wished he could afford to redecorate his house without financial assistance from Mersiha’s father. Adnan’s mother also told me that so many changes had taken place that she could not recognize her own house; it was as if it were another house. Despite her concern that Mersiha’s father paid for much of the redecoration, she approved of the young couple’s intention to change the living conditions in the entire house. “It is okay though,” she told me, “if Mersiha and Adnan redecorate, then they want to feel at home and remain here.” Because domestically manufactured furniture is significantly cheaper and therefore more affordable than furniture manufactured abroad, people are able

Figure 2.2. Barok L-furniture. The popular k´osnik set that can accommodate many people (photo courtesy of Barok 2010 catalog).

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to use the origin of a family’s furniture as a basis for assessing their economic position. Mersiha’s father, for example, told me several times that he could have bought the same type of bedroom furniture for one-third the price if it had been domestically manufactured. But since his daughter’s furniture was from places such as Saudi Arabia and Italy, it cost eight thousand dollars. He was doubly proud of the fact that he bought the furniture from a store in Kumanovo rather than from one in Skopje. Now everyone in town would know that he had bought the furniture that had been displayed in the window of the store for a long time—furniture that had figured in the dreams of many young couples. Local knowledge of who bought what enhanced the value of buying furniture from Kumanovo. Since Kumanovo is a relatively small town, gossip, rumors, and news circulate with amazing speed. Mersiha told me that, by the time the truck with the furniture arrived in front of Adnan’s house, several of their friends had already come to see whether it was true that Mersiha had received the expensive furniture as her dowry. Most of the furniture from Mersiha’s dowry was purchased in Kumanovo. Although Kumanovo’s proximity to Skopje (twenty miles) has inspired many Kumanovans to purchase big-ticket items in Skopje, where they find a greater selection, the town of Kumanovo has emerged as a major center for furniture stores. There were more than fifteen furniture sales rooms at the time of my fieldwork. Before 1991 there were only a few state stores (državni prodavnici), none of which offered the possibility of purchasing imported furniture. The styles were also limited. Since 1991, however, the stores have displayed an impressive variety of furniture. Owing to imports from Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Serbia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (such as the furniture seen in figure 2.3), and other places, people have many choices for selecting furniture. Adnan’s mother had had a less than positive experience with the marriage of Adnan’s older brother, whose wife had refused to remain in the extended family household. She was thus understandably pleased that her new daughter-in-law wanted to dominate the space, not only in the couple’s private room but also in the public areas of the house, with objects and commodities from her dowry. The older woman took the younger woman’s actions as a positive sign of the bride’s intention to be part of the family. Nonetheless, Adnan and his mother were concerned about how the bride’s wealthier background would play out in the household hierarchy and whether the bride would behave in an inappropriately superior manner. During my visit with Mersiha, she pointed out that one of her father’s colleagues, a Macedonian lawyer in charge of the legal aspects of her father’s business, had chosen the same bedroom furniture for his daughter’s dowry. Mersiha’s father has many ethnic Macedonian friends and she pointed out to me several times that although she, herself, prefers styles with Arabic and Muslim motifs, her family often buys things that are similar to those bought

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Figure 2.3. Luxurious furniture produced by the Turkish funiture producer Selva Koltuk (photo courtesy of Selva Koltuk 2010 catalog).

by their Macedonian friends. “What is beautiful is beautiful for Macedonians and Albanians. It is a matter of taste, not a matter of one’s ethnicity. There are Albanians now who have sophisticated tastes just like Macedonians. There isn’t much difference any more. The Albanians are not what they used to be—without any taste.” Adnan and Mersiha’s wedding banquet was held in the recently renovated hall of one of Kumanovo’s elite restaurants. The restaurant was popular among rich Albanians because the recently appointed manager was an ethnic Albanian. On the evening of the banquet I was approached by several of Adnan and Mersiha’s relatives and friends, who asked me how I liked the wedding. They wanted to know if it was very different from a Macedonian one. This was the first time that I had ever attended an Albanian wedding. It is true that the wedding banquet was similar to most of the Macedonian ones I have attended; there was loud music and a similar dancing style. And yet, several times during the dinner, one of the waiters, who was an ethnic Macedonian, rolled his eyes at me as if to express compassion and understanding. Toward the end of the evening, while serving dessert, he whispered in my ear: “Nice wedding, isn’t it? Albanians are not what they used to be. Now their weddings are just like ours.” The waiter’s remark, I realized, was a perception and evidence of social separa-

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tion. In fact, Albanian and Macedonian weddings have been remarkably similar for centuries—part of a common heritage of shared cultural space. The view that Macedonians and Albanians are so different from each other is a perception constructed and disseminated during the socialist period due to lack of contact between these ethnicities and the social isolation of ethnic Albanians. Modernization was equated in part with abandoning traditional customs—of which weddings are a primary locus. Macedonians were more urbanized during the Yugoslav period for reasons I have indicated in chapter 1, and as a result wedding practices diverged. A few months after the wedding, a friend from Skopje, my hometown, came to visit me in Kumanovo. I invited Adnan and Mersiha and her cousin to join us in the local café, which was one of the most popular places in Kumanovo for ethnic Albanians and ethnic Macedonians to go out together. My friend, an ethnic Macedonian and an architect, spent most of the evening in deep conversation with Orhan, Mersiha’s cousin, despite the unbearably loud music. Later that evening, as we were walking back to the apartment where I was staying in Kumanovo, she told me: “These Albanians are really nice. Mersiha and Adnan are a very nice couple—very modern. But Orhan impressed me so much—he is so knowledgeable about philosophy and literature. We were talking about death and the afterlife. Wow, he is so well read. And he dresses so well. You could not tell that he is an Albanian at all.” But then, as she was taking off her makeup with a cotton ball in front of the mirror in the bathroom, she shouted to me while I was unfolding the living room sofa: “But don’t get fooled, my dear. Albanians like these are the most dangerous ones—you cannot recognize them. They are so similar and therefore so much more sneaky. These are the ones we should fear and not be impressed by.” My initial reaction to her comment was impulsive: I was angry at what I interpreted as a racist comment directed at people I had grown to like and respect during my research. Although in time I realized that her comment was a genuine reaction that reflected the attitude of many ethnic Macedonians whose moral integrity I would not question, I could not comprehend the irrational fear or rage that many Macedonians expressed when talking about Albanians. The fact that a large number of Albanians are “modernized and dressed better than us so you cannot recognize that they are Albanians” reveals the dimension of “otherness” that Macedonians draw on to explain the existence of Albanians who are visually similar and hard to distinguish from “us.” Such Albanians neither hide their Albanian identity nor deny their religious affiliation. During socialism, in contrast, “successful” (socially visible) Albanians were most often party members, which inevitably meant that, like Macedonian party members, they had to be officially atheists. It also meant that they looked up to Macedonian citizens as the model for what a “successful” (and modern) member of society should be. Nowadays, however, Mersiha and her family are financially

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more successful than many Macedonians, who once enjoyed financial privileges during socialism. On the one hand, Mersiha is proud that she can own the same commodities as rich Macedonians, such as her father’s attorney. On the other hand, however, she constantly reminded me that she is Albanian. She was proud of the fact that her grandfather was a hodja, and that her entire family is religious.

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Conclusion As I mentioned in the introduction, my intention to link two theoretical fields that have usually been separated from each other, namely, consumption and ethnicity/nationalism, builds on the argument that changes in wealth acquisition are central to understanding social change in post-1991 Macedonia. By focusing on the profound feelings of loss of class and ethnic privileges experienced by some ethnic Macedonians in relation to ethnic Albanians, we can contextualize the seemingly nationalist and racist views that many Macedonians have toward Albanians. In addition to the importance of objects and commodities, I have shown that the bridge between class, ethnicity, and altered perceptions stems from spatial reconfigurations. Bourdieu (1984) argues that social space shapes how different groups interact with one another and that access to capital is the most important feature that shapes which group dictates the rules of the game. The interplay of symbolic vs. economic capital creates the space where different classes and, as is the case in Kumanovo, ethnic groups conceptualize each other’s presence (Bourdieu 1985). As I will show in the subsequent chapters, an analysis of spaces in the town of Kumanovo, as well as in the Republic of Macedonia, which has a bounded and fixed territory with a name (although still disputed by Greece) and a particular historical narrative of origin, corroborates these arguments: Kumanovo’s and Macedonia’s inhabitants have radically contested the different spaces since 1991. During socialism, the urban space of the town seemed more stable and fixed, although, as one can see from Buchli’s (1999) analysis in the case of the Moscow communal building, and Pittaway’s (2000) account in the case of Hungary, socialist high-rises and private houses alike were sites of individual agency for the people who inhabited the dwellings. Based on the ethnographic examples presented in this chapter, I have shown that some Albanians have more access to both economic and symbolic capital than some Macedonians. Members of once-privileged Macedonian households, such as those of Tanja and Lela, now struggle for survival and often blame Albanians for their economic impoverishment. At the same time, the social mobility of some Albanians has often been articulated in terms of “being modern” and “having good taste,” “just like our Macedonian colleagues”; Albanians can thus

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be considered to be performing “social mimicry.” To describe how ruling groups in former colonies “imitate” their colonizers, Bhabha (1990) used the concept of “social mimicry,” which explains relationships among different segments of the colonized in colonial contexts. This concept can also help us understand the practices and rhetoric adopted by upwardly mobile ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, who are now acting out and mimicking the “civilized” and “modern” qualifications formerly characteristic of ethnic Macedonians. To explain how Macedonians and Albanians make sense of their visual similarities and differences, I use the notion of social proximity, which reveals important dynamics of the social field in contemporary Macedonia that is now regulated on the basis of similarity rather than difference.7 Being different and distinguishing oneself from the other was easy during socialism. According to one Macedonian interviewed during my research, “then Albanians could be easily recognized from far away—their clothes, lack of style, their skin color, their body postures were so different from ours.” Although these stereotypes were not valid even then, many of the Macedonian informants believe that only in recent times have these differences been disappearing, making it harder to recognize who is who. My friend’s reaction to the appearance of Adnan and Mersiha, who could not be recognized as Albanians, reveals how the disappearance of differences that distinguishes “them” from “us” creates fear, as revealed by her comment that “Albanians like these are the most dangerous ones—you cannot recognize them. They are so similar and therefore so much more sneaky. These are the ones we should fear and not be impressed by,” although she herself could not define what one should be afraid of. These new similarities in wealth and social status, along with the new political situation after 1991, when Macedonia became independent, have disrupted the balance of power between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in Kumanovo. The loss of class privileges experienced by many ethnic Macedonians has become visible through the growing proximity and similarity of lifestyles between the two ethnic groups. Changes in the political economy of Macedonia have influenced the symbolic space that grounds and gives meaning to ethnic identities, which, since 1991, have been redivided by class, as some ethnic Albanians who were once poor have become nouveaux riches. This realignment of class and ethnicity has been fueled by the presence of a vast array of commodities. The presence of Albanians who are “just like us” has actually created fear among ethnic Macedonians, as it has threatened the privileged position that Macedonians were accustomed to enjoying vis-à-vis Albanians. As a result, one of the main ways in which ethnic Macedonians make sense of the changes is to explain the loss of their economic privileges and previously comfortable lifestyles by resenting and blaming Albanians. Evidently, for some ethnic Macedonians, the most effective way to rationalize their loss is through criticizing the Albanian presence.

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1. For more on nouveaux riches and the emergence of new elites in the Balkans, see Sampson (2002, 2003). 2. For more on class and consumption among urban professionals in Skopje see Thiessen (2006). 3. For more on the town of Kumanovo and its surroundings, see chapter 4 (see also Trajkovski 1997; Trifunovski 1974; Urošvić 1949). 4. As Szelenyi (1996) has argued for Hungary and Poland, the official policy in former Yugoslavia allowed for sharp residential distinctions not only between classes of Macedonians, but also between Macedonians and Albanians. 5. For more on class differences during the former Yugoslavia see, e.g., Djilas ([1957] 1987); Patterson (2001); Rusinow (1977); and Woodward (1995). 6. For more discussion on the symbolic role of the komoda or cabinet in the Soviet Union, see Boym (1994) and Buchli (1999). 7. For more extensive theoretical discussion on social proximity, see Chakrabarty (2002) and Žižek (1991). 8. On nationalism and Albanian reproduction rate in Macedonia see also Brunnbauer 2004

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References Bhabha, Homi. 1990. Nations and Narration. London: Routledge. Brunnbauer, Ulf. 2004. Fertility, Families and Ethnic Conflict. Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia, 1944-2002. Nationality Papers 32(3):565–598. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: The Social Construction of Taste. London: Routledge/ Kegen Press. ———. 1985. “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups.” Theory and Society 14: 723–44. Boym, Svetlana. 1994. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buchli, Victor. 1999. An Archeology of Socialism. Oxford: Berg. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2002. Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Djilas, Milovan. [1957] 1987. The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System. Orlando, FL: Harvest/Hbj Books. Donnan, Hastings. 2002. Interpreting Islam. London: Sage. ———. 2010. “Cold War Along the Emerald Curtain: Rural Boundaries in a Contested Border Zone.” Social Anthropology 18 (3): 253–266. Gingrich, Andre. 2006. “Neo-nationalism and the reconfiguration of Europe.” Social Anthropology 14:195–217. Gingrich, Andre, and Marcus Banks. 2006. Neo-nationalism in Western Europe and Beyond. Perspectives from Social Anthropology. New York: Berghahn Books. Holmes, Douglas. 2000. Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Patterson, Patrick. 2001. “The New Class: Consumer Culture under Socialism and Unmaking of the Yugoslav Dream 1945–1991.” PhD diss., University of Michigan. Pittaway, Mark. 2000. “Stalinism, Working-Class Housing and Individual Autonomy: The Encouragement of Private House Building in Hungary’s Mining Areas.” In Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, ed. Susan E. Reid and David Crowley, 49–64. Oxford: Berg. Rusinow, Dennison. 1977. The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948–1974. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sampson, Steven. 2002. “Beyond Transition: Rethinking Elite Configuration in the Balkans.” In Postsocialism, ed. Chris Hann, 297–316. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. “Weak States, Uncivil Societies and Thousands of NGOs: Western Democracy Export as Benevolent Colonialism in the Balkans.” In The Balkans in Focus: Cultural Boundaries in Europe, edited by Sanimir Resić and Barbara Tornquist-Plewa, 27–44. Lund, Nordic Academic Press. Szelenyi, Ivan. 1996. “Cities Under Socialism and After.” In Cities After Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-socialist Societies, ed. Gregory, I Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Ivâan. Szelâenyi, 286–317. Oxford: Blackwell. Thiessen, Ilka. 2006. Waiting for Macedonia: Identity in a Changing World. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Trajkovski, Petar. 1997. Staro Kumanovo: Luge, Običai, Nastani. Kumanovo: Prosveta. Trifunovski, Jovan. 1974. Kumanovska Oblast: Seoska naselja i stanovništvo. Skopje: Univerzitetska Pečatnica “Kiril i Metodij.” (University Press Kiril and Methodius). Urošević, Atanasie. 1949. Kumanovo. Skopje: Godišen Zbornik na Filozofskiot Fakultet vo Skopje. Woodward, Susan. 1995. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Žižek, Slavoj. 1991. For They Know Not What They Do. London: Verso.

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CHAPTER 3

E “Modern” masculinities Emancipation through education

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W

hile conducting the household survey as part of my research, I received explicit proof of how important education has become for ethnic Albanians. It was a Friday afternoon on a hot summer day. I was in my top-floor apartment, working with my research assistant, Adnan, a twenty-eight-yearold ethnic Albanian man who had been helping me for the past year. I had become very close to him and his fiancé Mersiha, and his extended family was one of the most important contact base throughout my research. We had grown to be a well-synchronized team. It was his turn to dictate while I entered data from the survey into the computer. The questionnaire concerned interior decorations, but it began with several general questions about the ages, education, and number of family members. After we finished entering around thirty of the questionnaires completed in Albanian, Adnan suddenly stood up without a word. He went into the kitchen, and started drinking water from the first thing he saw, which was an empty olive jar drying on the dish rack. Then he came back, clearly upset. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the upper part of his hand, and exclaimed, There is something not right here. I cannot believe that, in a family of eight, six members have college degrees and they all live together in one house. Bullshit! I would have known that family. I know most of the Albanians here and, trust me, this is not true. This is all exaggerations and lies.

I had also been surprised by the answers filled out in Albanian, which indicated that almost every household had several college-educated members. The questionnaires filled out in Macedonian, in contrast, suggested that far fewer household members were college educated. I remarked to Adnan that it was really contradictory that there were so many college-educated Albanians in Kumanovo and yet the main complaint of ethnic Albanians concerning their unequal status vis-à-vis ethnic Macedonians was that they suffered from restricted educational opportunities. “Yeah, right,” he said, “now people will start

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thinking that Albanians do not suffer oppression and segregation since so many have a college education.” My many interviews with Albanians had suggested that they experienced education as an important field of social struggle. It was only through the “exaggerations and lies” in the survey, however, that I came to realize the importance that Albanians attached to education. They clearly viewed it as the principal vehicle for changing their social status by transforming their current “backward and traditional mentality.” As Adnan admitted to me with a guilty expression on his face:

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Many of us [ethnic Albanians] think that if we are educated, we are modern. Education has become a main marker of superiority. I don’t have a university degree, and maybe you will attribute my remarks to envy. But I deeply believe that a person’s mentality does not change simply by getting a college degree or by being educated. Being really modern requires deeper changes. So few people today deserve to be called modern. And I mean this to apply to both ethnic groups: Macedonians and Albanians alike.

Many authors have observed that education is often associated with the acquisition of power (see Arthur 2005; Bourdieu 1988; Cole 2005; Coulby and Zambeta 2005; Foucault 2002). In the context of the Balkans, education has been treated as a requirement for nation-state building since the formation of the Yugoslav Kingdom in 1918. This illustrates Anderson’s (1991) argument that establishing a unified system of national education can effectively create the sense of horizontal comradeship crucial to the modern nation-state. By the 1990s education in Yugoslavia had become central for a process that differed from, but was not contradictory to, the one described by Anderson as occurring during the initial phase of nation-state building. Education played a crucial role in the fragmentation of such large socialist multinational federations as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (Bugarski 2001; Kamusella 2008).1 Once minorities were allowed to formalize education in their native languages, they were able to more effectively reject the dominance of groups who spoke languages such as Serbian (Serbo-Croatian) and Russian. Education in native languages played a crucial role in fostering the nationalist movements for independence that led to the dismemberment of earlier multiethnic federations. For ethnic Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, the political significance of education has been a burning issue since 1968, when ethnic Albanians staged massive demonstrations and demanded a loosening of Serbian dominance in the province of Kosovo. My research between 1999 and 2003 revealed that education was also closely tied to the notion of modernity, as suggested by Adnan’s comments. Being educated meant being modern. In addition, however, I discovered that education and modernity were linked to a third and, in my view, crucial attribute, namely,

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that of being a “real man.” In the following section I highlight masculinity as a critical link between education, ethnicity, and modernity.

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The hermeneutics of modernity: Being a “real man” The notion of a “real man” was frequently mentioned by the Albanians I interviewed. In most cases a “real man” was represented as a person who was fully in charge of his public and private affairs (his job and his family). He was also a person who could demonstrate sexual prowess, especially in relation to women from other ethnicities. Sexual performance was thus represented as an important arena where the role of a “real man” was achieved and demonstrated. Educated Albanian men, especially those holding powerful public positions, exhibited their sexuality openly and proudly—while expecting Albanian women to remain innocent and chaste. In an interview with Sevim, for example, an ethnic Albanian who holds a high position in the government, he disclosed that since he started traveling as part of his job, he began to appreciate “other things” in women—not just their abilities to cook and clean. Although his wife gave birth to their third child on the day of our interview, Sevim talked continuously about his Latvian mistress. He pointed out that since his professional career had “skyrocketed,” his priorities have changed. Now he needs intellect and brains in a woman. While stressing that he would never leave his wife, whom he had married in an arranged agreement rather than for love soon after his mother died, he added, “she is only a Šiptarka” (a derogatory term for Albanians used by Macedonians). His deliberate use of the derogatory label was driven, I believe, by his desire to better explain his wife to me. He went on to say, however, that he would never tolerate his wife’s infidelity: “it is different for women—men can leave something in their stomachs.” Further, he explained that maintaining Albanian women in their traditional role was the key to preserving Albanian culture. Were Albanian women to abandon their role, it would all be over—“Tutto finito,” he said, clapping his hands together to illustrate his point. I heard a similar account from Adem, an Albanian man who was an official in the ministry for education. He told me that he left for Germany to earn money and support his wife and two children. While in Germany, he met a German woman and they soon became intimate. Adem said that he was lonely and so it felt “natural” for him to agree to her proposition that he move to her place, live with her, and be supported by her. With such an arrangement, Adem would be able to save his money to send to his family back home. He would also, he said, get “the other thing.” Adem, like Sevim, stressed that a “real man” took care of his Albanian family, even as he enjoyed affairs with other women.

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He learned how to separate these two lives—to respect his Albanian wife but also be able to build other relationships that satisfy him in a different manner—“intellectually, sexually.” In that same conversation Adem revealed that his youngest brother, who had remained with his elderly parents, died four years ago, and that the widowed daughter-in-law had continued to live in her husband’s family with the children. Everyone (including Adem) contributed to the living expenses of their widowed sister-in-law. After her husband died, she was offered two options. One was to remain with her husband’s family, to become “one of them,” and raise her children. The second option was to move out and remarry (she was only thirty-one when her husband died). Should she decide to move out, however, her children would have to remain with her husband’s family, and she would lose the right to visit them. Faced with this choice, the widowed daughter-in-law agreed to stay. According to Adem, she is now really part of the family, taking care of Adem’s mother and father. He told me with a proud expression on his face, “I spend more money for the children of my deceased brother and his wife, than for my own wife and kids. That’s how it is among Albanians: she agreed to make the sacrifice and we all have to show how much we appreciate that.” He went on to remark that, unlike Macedonians, Albanians care about family. Albanian family members know how to appreciate the sacrifice a widowed daughter-in-law makes for her children. Sevim and Adem are just a few of the many Albanian men who sexualize their professional power. Their comments reveal that they felt “obliged” to perform sexually, particularly by acquiring “educated” mistresses. Sexuality has become a marker of social change and mobility among Albanian men from different strata of society. The “problem” of sex, prostitution, and illegal trafficking of women in western Macedonia has become more prominent today in media but also among Western NGOs. Amnesty International, for instance, issued a report in 1999 identifying the emergence of nightclubs with prostitutes in urban and rural spaces populated primarily by Albanians in western Macedonia as an urgent problem that begs to be addressed in a constructive manner.2 Masculinity, sexuality, and modernity have thus become mutually constitutive processes, deeply entangled with class mobility, and signifying rapid social change among ethnic Albanians. Moreover, when interlocutors like Sevim and Adem boast about their sexual affairs with Latvian, German, and Macedonian women while simultaneously stressing the care they take of their own wives, they call into question the masculinity of Latvian, German, and Macedonian men by implying that such men, unlike Albanians, cannot keep their own women chaste and so preserve their cultures. Lambevski, for example, in his intriguing and inspiring analysis of homosexuality, nationalism, and class in Macedonia, asserts that:

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This tendency for members of an oppressed minority to portray males of the dominant group as effeminate has been widely reported. For example, analyses of the experiences of the colonized in former colonies or of minorities living under ruling groups in nation-states reveal that their struggles were often articulated in terms of emasculating the Other and/or appropriating the women of the ruling group. Such negative stereotypes shed light on how minorities struggle against oppression and marginalization (Hart 2008; Tapinc 1992; McClintock 1995; Woodhead 1995).

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Modernity through education: Men’s fears about educated women The Albanian men who proudly recounted their affairs with women from other ethnonational backgrounds also stressed that Albanian women had to remain chaste. Albanian men had to take care of their own women and keep them away from other men, because, according to them, the chastity of the Albanian woman plays a crucial role in maintaining the purity of the Albanian community (nation). For example, Sevim, the government official, explicitly pointed out that an Albanian wife had to know her place. He stressed that women are central to the reproduction of the Albanian lineage, and therefore their sexual practices have to be controlled. If Albanian men lost control of Albanian women, he said, it would be “over.” According to him, an Albanian woman could engage only in conjugal sex with her husband. Lambevski (1999) also observed that Albanian women were regarded as the ones responsible for the procreation of the Albanian nation, and for keeping the sanctity of the Albanian home (meaning the “honor” of her man). But when Sevim contrasted his educated Latvian mistress with his Albanian wife, whom he described dismissively as “only a Šiptarka,” he revealed, perhaps unwittingly, a central problem facing Albanian nationalists. On the one hand, he implied that an educated, powerful, and modern man such as he needed a sexual partner who was also educated. But because the educated woman was his mistress rather than his wife, he also implied that education made a woman promiscuous, an implication confirmed by his derogatory reference to his chaste wife. It was his wife’s ignorance, he implied, that ensured her chastity. In short, Sevim’s comments reveal that Albanians face a problem common to ethnic groups whose members have been called “backward” but desperately

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want to be “modern.” A “modern” man not only “needs” an educated and modern sexual partner, but also needs an educated, modern wife to raise children who will also be “modern.” Since the Western Enlightenment, Westerners have commonly used the “status” of a group’s women to judge a group’s “modernity.” Ignorant, oppressed, and backward women are the hallmark of a “backward” group—at least according to commonly accepted Western stereotypes. At the same time, however, the sexual adventures of men such as Sevim convince men from ethnic minorities that educated women are promiscuous women, who cannot be trusted to be faithful wives. Sevim’s words thus express the dilemma experienced by men from ethnic minorities who must educate their women in order to be accepted as “modern,” but whose experiences in seducing the educated women of dominant groups lead them to believe that educated women are likely to betray them. During my fieldwork, I was told about two incidents that illustrate the dilemma that women’s education posed for Albanians. In the two honor killings I discuss below, everyone I spoke with held the young women responsible for the tragedies, and they cited education as one of the reasons why the girls behaved “improperly.” The first incident occurred in a popular café in Kumanovo visited by intellectuals and artists. A young ethnic Albanian man was walking by the café with his girlfriend, whom he had been dating for only a couple of months. Both of the young people were enrolled in Tetovo University. I heard different versions of what happened and so I do not know whether or not verbal provocations caused another young man, the girl’s former boyfriend, Ahmet, to try to stab the current boyfriend with a knife. According to local gossip, Ahmet had not been able to accept the breakup with his girlfriend and still cared for her, but the girl had decided that she wanted to end their relationship. She had left Ahmet and started dating the second young man. When Ahmet saw his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend openly displaying their feelings for one another as they walked along, he felt he had been humiliated in front of the crowd in the café. According to the café’s owner, Ahmet felt he had been deliberately provoked to confront the passing couple, who were openly holding hands, kissing each other, and “deliberately catching everyone’s attention.” Ahmet thus tried to stab his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend, but the boyfriend managed to avoid the blow, and the couple soon left the scene. Twenty minutes later, however, the new boyfriend came back with a gun and shot Ahmet, who died shortly afterward of the wound. After the shooting, the murderer disappeared. Ahmet’s family planned a vendetta. Avenging Ahmet required murdering a male from the new boyfriend’s immediate family, such as his father, one of his brothers, or possibly one of his uncles or cousins, since they lived together in an extended family household. None of these men left the yard of their house for the next two months, clearly fearing the vendetta.

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Three months later, shortly after the New Year, another murder took place, this time in the Kumanovo house where Mirza, an ethnic Albanian man who had migrated to Germany, was spending the winter holidays with his family. Mirza’s nineteen-year-old daughter had been dating an ethnic Albanian man in Germany whose family lived in a village near Kumanovo. Apparently, the girl did not take the affair seriously. She was planning to attend a university in Germany and intended to marry only after graduating. The boy she was dating, however, was insistent on getting married as soon as possible. The boy’s father paid a visit to the girl’s father’s house in Kumanovo with the intention of talking about marriage. Not only did his son want to marry the girl, but since the couple had been dating for a while, the boy’s father assumed that marriage was the only logical outcome. Mirza, however, knowing about his daughter’s plans for education and a career, told the boy’s father that his daughter was too young to marry. Three hours later, the boy’s father revisited the girl’s family with several members of his extended household. He apparently felt offended, and so he shot Mirza. Two days later, Mirza died in the local hospital in Kumanovo, despite the efforts of doctors to save him. His widow returned to Germany with her four children while the men in her husband’s extended family deliberated on what steps to take in order to avenge Mirza’s murder. When I talked with people in Kumanovo about these two murders, they usually held the girls responsible, blaming them for “provoking” the incidents. If the girls had been more compliant, they implied, these murders would not have happened. It seemed no accident that what both girls had in common was their desire to obtain an education. Ahmet’s former girlfriend was already a student at the university; as a result, people viewed her as having access to different men and as potentially prone to loose behavior. Mirza’s daughter also wanted to attend a university, and her father supported her in this goal. When interviewing an ethnic Albanian who taught in an elementary school, for example, he told me that the murders could have been avoided if the girls involved had been “decent”—if they had had morals and integrity. Girls have changed a lot nowadays. I don’t like that. They cause all these troubles and are unaware that their behavior could have really detrimental effects. Nora, that young girl who caused the first incident, has changed so much since she started university. Her cousin told me that her parents were afraid of her. As for Mirza’s daughter, she was too influenced by the West. It is hard to control girls if they have been exposed to Western influence for so long.

An Albanian woman I interviewed about these two incidents also held the girls responsible, although she also blamed the men: Young girls are becoming too wild. It is not good … Things are changing too fast. Nowadays girls want to date different boys but they don’t understand that it takes time for Albanian men to accept the changes—to accept that women

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can choose, can change partners … it will take a long time to get there. Men are still too possessive. They present themselves as “real men” but underneath it is cowardliness that drives this aggression.

I, like this Albanian woman, believe that these honor killings reflect the recent transformations of the notion of masculinity among Albanian men due to the stress on women’s education by the Albanian ethnic movement after 1991. And yet the murders were more commonly interpreted in line with the Kanun, which does require the tradition of honor killing when a woman refuses marriage and supposedly reflects primordial Albanian characteristics of honor killings followed by vendettas, as reported to occur among ethnic Albanians from rural environments (for more on honor killings in Albania see Waal 1998). 3 Sadly, the ethnic Albanians I spoke with in Kumanovo did not believe that the two murder cases could be resolved without vendettas. They thought that the police were incapable of handling them properly. In fact, they suspected that law and the police in Macedonia would deliberately encourage the families to feud with one another—to “take each other’s blood.” Macedonians, these Albanians thought, would welcome vendettas as serving to fragment and weaken Albanian cohesion.

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Overcoming “backwardness” through education: The dilemma of educating women As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, Albanians in Macedonia—like many ethnic groups experiencing oppression—embraced education as the principal means for becoming accepted as “modern” and therefore as eligible to participate fully as citizens of a modern state. During the Yugoslav federation, ethnic Albanians had demanded education in their own language, and they reiterated this demand in 1991 when they became a minority in the newly independent Macedonian state. At the same time that they demanded education in their own language, however, ethnic Albanians also began to agitate among themselves for the education of women. In fact, during the first years of independent Macedonia, most groups treated education for women as necessary for creating a modern nation-state. In the early 1990s, Albanian women were indeed suffering from a lack of education. Not only was the lack of educational opportunities for women an important factor in the emergence of the organized Albanian social movement that developed following the independence of Macedonia, but during the initial stages of this movement, Albanian nationalists in Macedonia also claimed to rely on women—whom they characterized as the most oppressed and marginalized members of their ethnic minority—to provide the spark for triggering social change. Albanian nationalists also hoped to use the cause of women’s

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education to gain support from international NGOs. Indeed, the first NGO formed by ethnic Albanians, entitled the Albanian Women’s Alliance (AWA), was founded in 1992 to encourage the emancipation of Albanian women in Macedonia. Educated, sophisticated, and articulate Albanian women, primarily from urban environments, became a powerful force for initiating social change among Albanians.4 They took the lead in convincing others of how important it was for women to obtain an education. As 1995 was proclaimed as a year for integration of women in social life by the United Nation, AWA received generous support from international NGOs and embassies both in terms of funding and logistics. As one of the founders revealed, when AWA was first founded, its members went from house to house in the towns and the villages where Albanians lived to promote the importance of education for women and to encourage parents—primarily fathers—to send their daughters to school. In addition to urging Albanian men to send their sisters and daughters to school, the founders of AWA sought the implementation of the literacy law that required that Macedonian citizens be literate. The members of AWA also wanted to increase the number of Albanian women participating in the paid workforce, to teach women about family planning and sexuality, and to encourage smaller families. AWA activists claimed that the high number of children per household was symptomatic of the subordinated status of ethnic Albanians in general, and of Albanian women in particular. This organization was founded by several leading Albanian women intellectuals in Tetovo, a town in western Macedonia that—after 1993—developed as a leading intellectual and cultural center for Albanians in Macedonia. The intertwined histories of Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia during the 1980s and 1990s enabled Albanians in Macedonia to draw from a wider pool in recruiting activists and experts to lead their social movement. Tetovo University (Mala Rečica), for example, was founded in 1994 by two ethnic Albanians, Fadil Sulejmani and Arben Xaferi, who were born in Macedonia but educated in Priština and who moved to Macedonia from Kosovo in 1991. The newly founded Tetovo University was the first institution after independence that enabled Albanians in Macedonia to receive a higher education entirely in Albanian. The founding of this university was in part a reaction to the closing of the pedagogical academy in the 1980s and subsequent Macedonian government foot-dragging about reopening it after 1991. Over only five years, the number of Albanians attending the university increased more than threefold. By 2001, 32 percent of the 2,480 students enrolled at the university were women, a dramatic increase from the 14 percent who enrolled in 1994 when the university opened. Higher education for women, however, proved to be a contradictory goal. On the one hand, women’s education was supposed to promote women’s emancipation and to help Albanians in general become “modern” and “civilized.” Indeed,

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sending a daughter or sister to school became a sign of loyalty to the Albanian ethnic movement. On the other hand, however, my interviews revealed that Albanian women, once married, were expected to comply with “traditional” Albanian values. Moreover, education was supposed to encourage women to be better wives and mothers to a new generation of Albanians. It was not supposed to encourage them to question traditional patterns of authority within the Albanian family, although often this is the effect that it had. The women I spoke with commonly said they wanted an education in order to escape the restricted lives their mothers and grandmothers had endured. Women wanted freedom from traditional constraints—even if they did not necessarily want the sexual freedom feared by Albanian men who sought educated mistresses from other ethnic groups. Ironically, Albanians were faced with the fact that while education might be valued in a daughter, it could be a liability in a wife or daughter-in-law. During my research I conducted a group interview with seven young women who were freshmen at Tetovo University and who were living in Kumanovo. My interview revealed that these young women viewed education as a road to emancipation. It was a way for them to escape the lifestyles of their mothers and grandmothers, who had been confined primarily to the home. I conducted the interview in a coffee shop in the central shopping mall in Kumanovo. The spacious café was one of the most popular places for Albanian high school students. It had the reputation of a safe place where young women could go alone, without fear of “ruining” their reputations. Relatives of the young women sat at the surrounding tables, watching us closely. Before I scheduled the interview, I had been told that most of the Albanians in Kumanovo knew and watched each other, and that male relatives of the girls would likely be in the café, closely monitoring our movements and conversation. Nevertheless, the seven college students were relaxed and cheerful, dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps. When I asked them about their experiences at Tetovo University, they told me that education gave them an opportunity to experience “another life of books, knowledge, decisions, and boys.” Despite the fact that their parents required them to commute the thirty miles from Kumanovo to Tetovo daily by bus, they enjoyed the university experience. One of them observed that it would be even more fun if they were allowed to rent rooms in Tetovo where they could live during the week, returning home only on weekends. Another woman, however, pointed out that her “father thinks it might be too dangerous for us to stay in Tetovo, that we might do some bad things. This way we have to come back home in the evening. Often one of our brothers or male relatives accompanies us to Tetovo: to guard us so that we behave properly.” She smiled and giggled after saying this. I also learned about what Albanian women want from higher education from conversations with Loreta, an ethnic Albanian woman in her late thir-

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ties. Loreta had a high school diploma, but she had never worked at a paid job. Unmarried, she lived with her widowed mother and an unmarried younger brother, doing most of the housework and relying for economic support on the financial “mercy” of her brothers. In my conversations with Loreta, she often mentioned, painfully, that if she had been able to obtain a college degree, her life would have taken a different course. Loreta blamed her lack of a college degree for her failure to find a husband. She told me that she fell in love with a doctor, a graduate from Priština, whom she dated for several months. But they never married, despite the fact that she claimed to have loved him. Apparently she was not educated enough for his standards, because he married another doctor. Loreta also spoke of another missed marriage opportunity, this time with a lawyer who once again did not marry her because of her lack of education. After these two failures, Loreta reported that she simply lost interest in getting married. She told me that she did not want to get married just to get out of the house: “If it is not a marriage for love, then it shouldn’t happen at all.” Loreta was particularly bitter, however, about not having a job and being able to earn money for herself. She had been trying to find a job in a state institution for twelve years, constantly applying for different positions. But jobs were scarce for people with college degrees, let alone for those with only a high school diploma. Moreover, Loreta was too old for secretarial or shop-keeping jobs, given that she was in her late thirties. Such jobs were reserved for “puterki”—young, attractive women in their early twenties. Since 1991, attractive young women have become a common part of the interior decor of the new businesses created by the newly rich entrepreneurs regardless of their ethnicity. Even as Loreta complained to me about the problems she faced because of her lack of a college degree, she spoke fearfully about her younger brother’s coming marriage. She was worried about whether or not the new bride would comply with her obligations as the youngest member of the household. Would the new bride be humble and show proper respect for her husband’s mother and older sister? Loreta, who had been doing most of the family’s housework for years, was understandably worried that the new bride might treat her more as a servant to be ordered about than as a respected older relative to be obeyed. Loreta had reason to fear. In interviews with members of another Albanian family, I learned about Erzana, a young woman with a college degree from Tetovo University who refused to accept the role of compliant daughter-in-law in her husband’s extended family household. Erzana apparently felt that her college degree entitled her to seek a different lifestyle from that expected of daughters-in-law. She felt she had the right to move out of the extended family household and live separately with her husband. Moreover, Erzana felt that because she held a well-paying job—she earned more than her husband—she should be able to decide how and where she wanted to live. Throughout their

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short marriage, Erzana’s husband was apprehensive about her choices, decisions, and actions. She made it clear to him that she would not compromise the lifestyle she wanted to have. Her husband, torn between his mother and her desire for a traditional lifestyle, on the one hand, and his wife’s insistence on setting up a separate household, on the other, suffered and was unable to find a compromise that would ensure peace in the family. Erzana was the one who precipitated a divorce. Her family had apparently encouraged her in her desire to move out of her husband’s extended family household and into a separate apartment. Erzana’s mother told Erzana’s husband that a modern woman such as Erzana deserved to live the way that she wanted. Erzana’s departure was an embarrassment for her husband’s entire family. It was as if his family had not been good enough “for an educated young career woman.” But the divorce was particularly shameful for the husband. He experienced it as a failure on his part. He thought he had failed to be a “real man” because, in his view, “a woman would never leave a real man.” The different attitudes of the two families involved in this divorce reveal the contradictory expectations associated with women’s higher education. On the one hand, educating a daughter is a source of family pride. Having a daughter with a college education not only signifies the family’s wealth, but also testifies to their concern for furthering the larger Albanian social struggle for emancipation. On the other hand, however, Albanians hope that when a bride joins her husband’s family, she will perform the traditional role of a submissive daughterin-law and wife. She is expected to be obedient and to comply unquestioningly with orders from her mother-in-law. Erzana’s mother-in-law questioned if she had imposed rules too strict for the young woman. “It seemed only normal to ask a daughter-in-law to kiss the mother-in-law’s hand at least in the first year of marriage. I taught my daughters to do that their whole lives—it is a nice gesture of showing respect for the elderly. There is nothing humiliating for the person who does it. I’ve been doing it my whole life and I would like my daughters-in-law to do that. I think I’ve deserved it now that I am approaching the end of my life,” she explained once over coffee.5 Erzana’s husband complied with her wish not to kiss the hand of his mother, but he was determined that he would never agree to leave his extended family and move into an apartment. Yet more and more Albanian men are agreeing to move away from their extended family households to live in apartment buildings with only their own wives and children. These nuclear family households, I was told by several middle-aged Albanians, are ruled by the wives. The men in such households, they said, are “weaklings” who are unable to tame their dominant wives. Albanian men, in particular, seemed to feel that their masculinity is threatened by the rise of nuclear family households. Many of my older male informants reacted angrily at the mention of such households, dismissing them

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as initiated by aggressive young women who wanted to cause trouble. Such men usually ended their diatribes against selfish young women with praise for Albanian traditions, particularly those enjoining respect for the elderly and for social order in general.

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Conclusion This chapter only scratches the surface of the complexity of gender politics in the context of ethnicity and appeals to “tradition” as a means to maintain a certain kind of gender order. The growing body of literature on masculinity has added a valuable dimension to gender studies.6 By insisting on the importance of making masculinity visible, this literature has recognized that men, too, have a gender and that they do not represent the generic human. Moreover, this literature has stressed that masculinity and femininity are mutually defining categories, shaped in opposition to one another. Any understanding of how masculinity is experienced by men living in particular times and places must be based on an investigation of its corresponding version of femininity. This chapter attempts to fill in the importance of family and marriage, and the contradictions of gender roles, for Albanians in the specific context of the first half of the 2000s. The conclusions based on my research reveal the close connection between nationalism and masculinity. Nagel stresses the intimate connection—both historical and modern—between manhood and nationhood, arguing that the “microculture of masculinity in everyday life articulates well with the demands of nationalism” (1998: 242). She observes that the modern nation-state is essentially a masculine institution, from its hierarchal authority structure to its emphasis on, and resonance with, masculine cultural themes such as honor, patriotism, pride, bravery, or duty. While women have a place in nationalist discourse, that place is defined and determined by masculinist definitions of femininity (ibid.: 245). Feminist political theory has also analyzed how nationalist discourses imbue women’s bodies with special significance as representations of community and cultural continuity. The adornment, ritualized movement, labor, and sexual capacities of female bodies signify the welfare of the larger body politic. Racial politics, in particular, which valorize supposedly genetic consistencies, typically require that women’s sexuality be strictly controlled, due to their imagined role as vessels of the “race” (Waetjen 2001). Such racial politics were particularly evident in colonial empires. Women’s sexuality was at issue in the creation of empire, where colonial officials cited the need to protect European women from native men and thus justified all manner of repression. “As representatives of the political collective, the bodies of individual women are subjected to nationalist concern, control and to violation” (ibid: 121).

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The Balkan wars have amply illustrated how women’s bodies are inscribed and used within nationalist discourses. In the Balkans, nationalist discourses have assigned women symbolically crucial roles as reproducers of the nation and as upholders and transmitters of its innermost values. As Nixon (1994) has observed, women may thus serve as the bearers of the nation, carrying in their wombs the hope of perpetuity while also incarnating national values. Moreover, since women are institutionalized as male property, they come to mark the borders between ethnicities. Thus, ethnic biology, ethnic culture, and ethnic territory converge in their beings. During wars of dispossession, this symbolic freight can become very costly for real women, as evidenced by the Serbian strategy of using rape as an instrument for “ethnic cleansing.” Caught in the cross fire of a male war, women find themselves in the unenviable position of being first-class icons but second-class citizens. They are denied the arms to defend themselves while weighed down with symbolic responsibilities as guarantors of homeland, ethnos, and lineage (ibid.). While the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were distinctly different from the conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, the minority struggle of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia is inherently a fractured, divided, and nonmonolithic process shot through with gender conflicts. Gender not only articulates the minority group’s struggle, but also becomes the terrain on which the meaning of Albanian ethnicity in contemporary Macedonia is contested. Arguably, ethnic/national identities are profoundly masculinist and when nationhood is imagined as a masculinist project, women are cast in the role of representing larger ethnic and nationalist goals. Indeed, my fieldwork experience revealed that women were not only implicated in nationalistic projects, but also served as cornerstones in these projects due to their reproductive function. Because real women, however, are always active agents rather than passive symbols, they are able to subvert and contest the goals and achievements of a nation-building project. The tendency of gendering the nation also common in many different contexts deserves a close examination, for the process of gendering reveals close relationships between kinship and nation-state metaphors (see the cases of Germany and Greece as discussed by Borneman 1992; Herzfeld 1985). While demonstrating that there is a complex interplay between personal, social, and wider national, political, and economic relations, this chapter concurs with the larger literature that argues for the mutual constitutiveness of nation, gender, race, ethnicity, and class (Collier 1987; Mankekar 1999; Yanagisako and Delaney 1995; Yuval-Davis 1997). In addition, this chapter highlights the fact that the structure of gender relations appears to be the site of both unspoken as well as sometimes explosive contestation within the Albanian population. I demonstrate how gender highlights the internal battles and, in fact, the contingency and precariousness

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of apparently unassailable and fixed concepts such as Albanian ethnicity. The inevitable question is: if Albanian ethnicity is so easily challenged by changes in younger women’s choices, then exactly how fixed is “Albanianness”? The answer brings us back to the introduction of this book, where I introduced the “impossibility of nation,” an idea formulated by Fitzpatrick (1995) and building on the Lacanian notion of the “impossibility of sexual relations.” I have already discussed some variations of impossibility: the working class ideology and the brotherhood and unity ideologies during the Yugoslav have all revealed their inherent impossibility. Macedonian nationalism since 1991, based on the idea of an ethnic state, also rests on a fundamental impossibility, which I will discuss in more detail in chapter 5. While the previous chapter was about the tensions between groups as historical changes occur, the present analysis in this chapter is about the tensions within the group as such changes took place. Evidently, such occurrences are not unique only to Macedonia or to Albanians (for the case of Northern Greece, see Demetriou 2004). Existing feminist scholarship has amply shown how men feel threatened by any reduction in their privileges as men or in their control over women (Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; hooks 1997, 2000; Johnson 2001, 2005; Valian 1999). What I attempted to do with this chapter was show how gender conflict highlights the unacknowledged contingency and contestability of constructions of ethnicity, and how education and modernity link with these contingencies. Since 1991, many women from Albanian ethnic backgrounds have gained access to education, which has led to massive changes in the roles that Albanian women are able to play in public and private spaces, and in Albanian women’s ability to bypass the limitations imposed on Albanians in the 1980s. The number of Albanian women who are political activists and representatives has been growing steadily, and they have spoken out about the need to emancipate women by allowing them access to higher education and new workplaces. While the empowerment of women has been on the official agenda of Albanians in Macedonia, regardless of their political affiliations, the effects of women’s empowerment, as I have argued in this chapter, have taken an unexpected turn. Albanian men are experiencing a “crisis” due to the tension arising from their desire to encourage women’s education while, at the same time, control women’s sexuality. I have focused on the inherent contradiction between the official claim of ethnic Albanians, which is that they are struggling for integration into contemporary Macedonian society, and the evident agenda of their struggle, which is framed in distinctive and differentiating ethnic and gendered terms. Ethnic Albanians, like many minority populations in states with representative governments, are pursuing the mutually contradictory goals of integration and apartness. They want to be “modern” citizens while retaining the “traditions” that define them as a people. Therefore, the very aim of their social struggle for self-government is controversial when “the self ” is defined ethnically.

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The ethnic Albanian women I worked with embody the contradictory aspects of modernity and tradition, compliance and progress, obedience and emancipation. Not only has the female body become the “idiom” in which the tensions of the minority struggle are centered, but women’s bodies have also come to symbolize the inherent limitations and impossibilities of the modern nation-state.7 The Albanian female body triggers honor killings, testifying to the “backwardness” of “all” Albanians, even as women’s subordination encourages international organizations to support Albanian minority causes. Women have also initiated the spread of nuclear families by moving out of the homes of their extended families into areas of the town previously populated mainly by Macedonians. As long as the Albanian struggle is centered on the tension between remaining ethnically pure and becoming “civilized” it will be traversed with these conflicting tensions. When “civilization” is defined in terms of women’s education and sexual emancipation, ethnic purity becomes impossible—and vice versa, given that education begets sexual emancipation, but sexual emancipation does not belong to the patriarchal definitions of “civilization.” Arguably, the new ethnic states created from the former Yugoslav republics after 1991 confirm the “impossibility” of the nation-state regime in this multiethnic environment. The ethnic wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia reveal that groups classified as “minorities” do not easily accept the arrangement of being treated as communities that are a part of, and yet do not fully belong to, the nation-state. Although these ethnic wars were carried out in the name of challenging the exclusionary character of the nation-states, the rise of nationalism in the Balkans in the 1990s has ensured that women’s bodies become sites and tools for ethnonational struggle. The linkages between wartime rapes, nation, and ethnicity have traumatized women on multiple levels. Women have not only had to endure the torture of rape, but have also had to suffer rejection at the hands of the patriarchal community, because women who have been raped are thereafter viewed as polluted and dirty, and thus incapable of reproducing ethnically “pure” offspring. In this chapter I have shown that the growing number of young educated Albanian women with college degrees, who often reject “traditional values” and want to work at paying jobs outside the home, has led many Albanians to fear for the preservation of their ethnic Albanian “lineage.” Because many Albanians (as is the case with other ethnic groups) still view women as the bearers of their culture, owing to women’s reproductive (biological and social) function, these Albanians, particularly elite men and older women, worry that they will lose their culture, heritage, and lineage. So far, there have been few mixed marriages between Macedonians and Albanians, thus demonstrating that both ethnicities have been largely successful in maintaining the “purity” of their lineage. Nevertheless, the few mixed mar-

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riages, along with a small number of mixed liaisons and relationships, especially if they occur between ethnic Albanian women and ethnic Macedonian men, have generated inordinate fear among Albanian men. Moreover, the official goal of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia has begun to turn from “integration” into Macedonian society to “protection” of their “Albanianness.” In this chapter I tried to show that for those Albanians who worry about the need to preserve and protect the “purity” of their ethnic heritage, control over female sexuality has become a central preoccupation. The effect of this fear of the “Other” in both cases has been a deepening social distance, despite the growing spatial proximity of the two ethnicities, an occurrence that I discuss in more detail in the next chapter. Some towns in western Macedonia where ethnic Albanians are a majority, such as Tetovo, Struga, Debar, or Gostivar, still employ the rhetoric of “integration and cohabitation” for the different ethnicities living there. The Macedonians involved in my research, however, pointed that this rhetoric of integration is deliberately undermined precisely to prevent interethnic cooperation. As I pointed out earlier, there is a fear that allowing educated Albanian women to work alongside members of other ethnic groups might lead to the erosion of the “Albanian ethnic fabric.” According to one of my Albanian interlocutor, there is fear among Albanian men that such women might change partners, choosing men who are not ethnic Albanians and thereby provoking rage in Albanian men. The nationalistic (and anti-Macedonian) politics of ethnic Albanians in contemporary Macedonia cannot be understood without taking into account the fear common to many Albanian men that, perhaps, if educated Albanian women are given the opportunity, some might prefer Macedonian men over Albanian men. Albanian men, he believes, are afraid that such women might change partners, choosing men who are not ethnic Albanians and thereby provoking rage in Albanian men. My question as to what kind of rage would be provoked, however, remained unanswered. In conclusion, my research disclosed that the nationalistic (anti-Macedonian) politics of ethnic Albanians in contemporary Macedonia cannot be understood without taking into account the notion of fear common to many Albanians that, perhaps, if educated Albanian women are given the opportunity, some might prefer Macedonian over Albanian men.

Notes 1. It is important to note that not only was the formal language an important nationalist vehicle, but also the content of the textbooks and materials used in formal education. This is an important aspect of why Macedonia seceded only reluctantly and in fear of war. Similar arguments could be made for Hungarians in Vojvodina. And, while language was indeed a crucial mobilizer in some places, this was not everywhere and was not uniform.

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2. It is important to note that NATO and UN soldiers, as well as Macedonian men, have been equally frequent visitors of these clubs. 3. The Kanun is a collection of customary law codified by the prince Lek Dugakjin in the fifteenth century used mainly in northern Albania and Kosovo. The Kanun includes the following line: Grueja ashtshakull per me bajte. This is translated as, “The woman is a leather sack made to endure,”: or “A woman is known as a sack made to endure as long as she lives in her husband’s house. Her parents do not interfere in her affairs, but they bear the responsibility for her and must answer for anything dishonorable she does” (Kanun, article XXIX, Leonard Fox’s translation). 4. One of the most vocal activists was Teuta Arifi, whose PhD thesis dealt with literary and philsophical issues related to the role of women in Albanian society (“Likot na Ženata vo Albanskata Kniževnost” - The Figure of the Woman in Albanian Literature). She is the author of the book Egzistencijalen Feminizam (Existential Feminism) 1997 and co-author of Ženata vo Sovremenite Trendovi vo Makedonija (The Woman in the Contemporary Trends in Macedonia, 1997). She joined the Party for Democratic Integration which was formed after the 2001 military conflict, and in 2002 became the first female Albanian MP in the Macedonian Parliament. In 2011 she became a vice prime minister for European Integration, and in March 2013 she was elected a mayor of Tetovo. 5. Older people in Kumanovo pointed out to me that the custom to kiss the hand of the elderly was prevalent until World War II among every ethnic group and dates from Ottoman times. The current popularity of Turkish TV soap operas, where this gesture is represented, was commented on by several older people as a common and shared tradition that later became associated only with Albanians. 6. For more literature on masculinity in former Yugoslavia see Bracewell (2004); Helms (2006); Jansen (2010); Neofotistos (2012); Schäuble (2009); Žarkov (2007) and Živković (2006). 7. For more literature on different social tensions inscribed in women’s bodies, see Collier (1997); Kligman (1998); Mankekar (1999); McClintock (1995); Mertus (1997); and Verdery (1996).

References Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Immagined Communities. London: Verso. Arifi, Teuta. 1997. Egzistencijalen Feminizam. Skopje: Shkupi. Najčevska, Mirjana, Teuta Arifi et al. 1997. Ženata vo Sovremenite Trendovi vo Makedonija. Skopje: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Arthur, James. 2005. Citizenship and Higher Education: The Role of Universities in Communities and Society. London: Routledge. Borneman, John. 1992. Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo Academicus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bracewell, Wendy. 2004. “Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Nationalism in Serbia.” Nationalities Papers 6 (4):563–90. Bugarski, Ranko. 2001. “Language, Nationalism and War in Yugoslavia.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 151:69–87.

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Cole, Johnetta B., and Bevery Guy-Sheftall. 2003. Gender Talk: Sexism, Power, and Politics in the African American Community. Atlanta, GA: One World Press. Cole, Mike. 2005. Marxism, Postmodernism and Education. London: Routledge. Collier, Jane Fishburne. 1997. From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collier, Jane Fishburne, and Sylvia Junko Yanagisako. 1987. Gender and Kinship: Essays toward a Unified Analysis. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Coulby, David, and Evie Zambeta. 2005. Globalization and Nationalism in Education. London: Routledge. Demetriou, Olga. 2004. "Prioritizing ‘ethnicities’: The uncertainty of Pomak-ness in the urban Greek Rhodoppe." Ethnic and Racial Studies 27:95–119. Fitzpatrick, Peter. 1995. “‘We know what it is when you do not ask us’: Nationalism as Racism.” In Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law, ed. Peter Fitzpatrick. 3–26. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth Publishing. Foucault, Michel. 2002. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972– 1977. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education. Hart, Jason. 2008. “Dislocated Masculinity: Adolescence and the Palestinian Nation-inExile.” Journal of Refugee Studies 21:64–81. Helms, Elissa. 2006. “Gendered Transformations of State Power: Masculinity, International Intervention, and the Bosnian Police.” Nationality Papers 34:343–61. Herzfeld, Michael. 1985. The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Createn Mountain Village. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. hooks, bell. 1997. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press. ———. 2000. Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics. Boston: South End Press. Jansen, Stef. 2010. “Of Wolves and Men: Postwar Reconciliation and the Gender of International Encounters.” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 57: 33–49. Johnson, Allan. 2001. The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2005. Privilege, Power and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kamusella, Tomasz. 2008. The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit (The Code of Lekë Dukagjini). 1989. Albanian Text Collected and Arranged by Gjeçov Shtjefën. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Fox, New York: Gjonlekaj Publishing Company,. Kligman, Gail. 1998. Politics of Duplicity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lambevski, Sasho. 1999. “Suck My Nation: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Politics of (Homo)sex.” Sexualities 2:397–419. Mankekar, Purnima. 1999. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation Postcolonial India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge. Mertus, Julie. 1997. The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nagel, Joane. 1998. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21:242–51. Neofotistos, Vasiliki. 2012. The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press.

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Nixon, Rob. 1994. Homelands, Harlem, and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond. New York: Routledge. Schäuble, Michaela. “Contested Masculinities: Discourses on the Role of Croatian Combatants During the ‘Homeland War’ (1991-1995)”, in Gender Dynamics and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by Ruth Seifert & Christine Eifler, 169–197. Bern: Peter Lang Verlag. Tapinc, Huseyin. 1992. “Masculinity, Femininity, and Turkish Male Homosexuality.” In Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experience, ed. Ken Plummer, 39–49. London: Routledge. Valian, Virginia. 1999. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Boston: MIT Press. Verdery, Katherine. 1996. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Waal, Clarissa De. 1998. “From Laissez-Faire to Anarchy in Post-Communist Albania.” Cambridge Anthropology 20:21–44. Waetjen, Thembisa. 2001. “The Limits of Gender Rhetoric for Nationalism: A Case Study From Southern Africa.” Theory and Society 30:121–52. Woodhead, David. 1995. “‘Surveillant Gays’: HIV, Space and the Constitution of Identities.” In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, ed. David Bell and Gill Valentine, 231–43. London: Routledge. Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, and Carol Lowery Delaney. 1995. Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. New York: Routledge. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation. London: Sage Publications. Žarkov, Dubravka. 2007. The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-up of Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press. Živković, Marko. 2006. “Ex-Yugoslav Masculinities under Female Gaze, or Why Men Skin Cats, Beat Up Gays and Go to War.” Nationalities Papers 34:257–63.

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CHAPTER 4

E Topography of spatial and temporal ruptures (Im)materialities of (post)socialism

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his chapter examines the material/architectural nature of Kumanovo to show the topography of spatial and temporal ruptures, an expression I have coined to discern how different ethnicities, especially Albanians, have been emerging in the domain of the visible through historical narratives, material presence, and popular perceptions. A starting point of my analysis is the district Divo Naselje, the most densely populated area inhabited by Albanians in Kumanovo, which literally translated means “Wild District.” Initially designating the “nature” of the district during socialism, with houses built “illegally”— without official permission from the local authorities (na divo)—the meaning of “wildness” in this district gradually expanded to connote lower “civilizational” values and “illegal” (i.e., unregulated) activities most often associated with Albanians. As many Macedonians witness an upward class movement of Albanians while experiencing their own economic descent, they make sense of the changing class roles in contemporary Kumanovo by insisting on the “wildness” of Albanians materialized through space, houses, and living manners. In this chapter I discuss how the story of Kumanovo’s “spatial and temporal origin” (Buck-Morss 1989) reveals broader power dynamics constituted by and constitutive of spatial representation of temporal sharing of the town.

The “Wild District” exposed Divo Naselje1 (“Wild District”) is the first eye-catching district in Kumanovo when one drives north on the main freeway that connects Skopje and Kumanovo. Only the rears of the houses can be seen. Sometimes I saw children play in the large patch of green surface between the two lanes of the freeway, a frightening sight given the speed of the passing automobiles. The name Divo

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Naselje is the widely accepted toponym for this neighborhood. First used mainly by Macedonians, it now circulates among and is used by Albanians and other ethnicities too. The meaning of divo is ambiguous: the neighborhood is called divo (wild) because most of the houses were built without permits. Those districts without official urban permits in Macedonia were designated as divi and state officials considered them “illegal.” But the meaning of “wild” in this Kumanovo district also derives from the widespread view that I heard from many Macedonians that law is absent here, and that people in this district—mainly Albanians—“are wild without respect for law outside of their own ‘wild horde’ [diva orda].” Many of the houses in Divo Naselje built or remodeled in the last two decades are impressive in size and style. My first walk through this neighborhood in the autumn of 1999 convinced me that the transformation of style and the size of the houses revealed an important shift in wealth and power in Kumanovo in particular and in Macedonia in general. Often, stylish columns fence the large balconies tiled with porcelain or marble. The sporadic presence of swans or lions guarding the entrances creates uneasiness, but the overall impression is that a lot of money, attention, and the professional advice of exterior (and interior) designers and architects lies behind the construction. The money and professional expertise invested in building the houses was obvious, even among the old (remodeled and refurnished) houses. Although not newly built from scratch, they had a minimum of one-story extensions (often up to three), decorative façade stones covering the front side of the house facing the street, terrace flowers, and several exterior armchairs and a coffee table. Many of the houses in Divo Naselje differ from those in Orta Bunar, for instance, a central area in Kumanovo also populated by many Albanians, where Muslim households would still have a high fence (rarely a wall, and more often a metal fence) around the house. In Divo Naselje, against the traditional Islamic practice, many of the houses stand almost fully exposed, often even revealing interiors, especially if curtains are pulled back and balcony wings or sliding doors are left widely open. Against the tendency to wall up and “hide behind walls,” the houses in Divo Naselje appeared to me fully exposed and ostentatious. In contrast to the sumptuous houses, the most neglected part of the district was its infrastructure. The roads were full of potholes, not suited to the large houses. The sidewalks were used to park cars (many of which were expensive BMWs and SUVs), leaving the pedestrians to walk on the street, squeezing behind one another when a car would pass or leaning against the parked cars when two cars would pass, a very common sight all over Macedonia. On the day of my walk the drainage was choked after the heavy rain from the previous night, and an unpleasant smell was rising from the gutter. During socialism Divo Naselje did not exist semiotically with the same connotation and “civilizational” attributes that it holds today. I heard from people

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that most often it was referred to as the Tode Mendol part of town, the name of the main street going through the district. Prior to 1991 this district was also not viewed as exclusively Albanian. Nowadays most Macedonians refer to Divo Naselje as a place that needs to be avoided, a place where Macedonians are not safe. Yet, my question posed to many of “What kind of danger is out there?” was never directly answered. During the military insurgency in 2001, the police frequently visited Divo Naselje to check for illegal weapons possessions, drug laboratories, or other allegedly illegal activities. Newspapers and TV news stations indeed reported several incidents where weapons were confiscated from their owners. But, despite my persistent inquiries during my research, no one told me of a personal incident in Divo Naselje. Why then is this district—which has, in fact, become more urbanized, modernized, and “civilized”—called Divo Naselje? Why has this district become divo (wild) when in fact traditional Islamic housing elements have disappeared, and when the newly built or remodeled houses are more “Westernized” than the ones that existed previously? The views and fears that Macedonians have developed of Divo Naselje require an explanation that goes beyond the framework of actual experience and justifiable reasons. In chapter 2 I have developed the concept of loss as central in explaining nationalism in contemporary Macedonia. Here I insist on the role of space as critical in shaping the view that people have of each other. The basis on which this view is formed is the official narrative of spatial and temporal origins, a paramount link in the chain that produces the collective fantasy and fear of the Albanian “Other.” While the Ottoman past has always been officially acknowledged as an inseparable part of Kumanovo’s spatial and temporal origins, the contemporary view of Islam, and especially the relationship between Islam and Albanians in Macedonia, informs how the history of Kumanovo is narrated in published and official form, and how the story of the town’s origins is disseminated through popular narratives. A semiotic reading of Kumanovo’s architecture similarly reveals both temporal continuities and ruptures that relate the five centuries of Ottoman rule to present-day political tensions. While ethnographic and historical analyses produced during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia period (1918– 1941), the socialist Yugoslav period (1945–91), or in independent Macedonia (1991–present) suggest that Kumanovo was indeed founded as a Turkish town, and the majority of the population was Turkish. In the pages below I will show how these “scientific accounts” are shaped by the sense of current ethnic claims of “ownership” of the town. In his essay Theses of the Philosophy of History and in his support for historical materialism, Benjamin (1994) insists on an appreciation of time that acknowledges how the present informs the past, and vice versa. Writing against linear and teleological versions of historicism, which are inevitably written from

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the position of the victor to celebrate “the tales of cultural treasure,” Benjamin reminds us that what remains unsaid is the barbarism, conflict, and violence underlying the celebratory tone of these tales. A tool of his analysis of historical materialism is space and materiality; they are constitutive of and constituted by conflicts between different ideological systems and shifts, rendering the violence and tensions visible (ibid.). Space in Kumanovo has, indeed, been a literal and symbolic battlefield where the Islamic, the Christian, the socialist, and the new—late capitalist—elements have been in constant struggle, shaping, affecting, and reflecting popular ethnic, religious, and gender distinctions. Although the presence of Islam was closely linked to larger historical events, generally speaking, since 1918 and the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, when Kumanovo and central Macedonia were called South Serbia (Južna Srbija) or Old Serbia (Stara Srbija), the official narrative of the town has been told from the perspective of its Christian “majority.” The Yugoslav socialist rule and the post-1991 independent period have included an additional anti-Islamic rhetoric. The present-day nationalistic tension in Kumanovo and independent Macedonia is situated within a similar matrix of a Macedonian (Christian) majority and the Albanian (Muslim) minority. It is within this framework that I interpret the multilayered meanings of the “Wild District” and Kumanovo’s narratives of the past.

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Narratives of the past: “Spatial and temporal origins” of a small town The first comprehensive ethnographic study of Kumanovo was written by the Serbian ethnographer Atanasije Urošević in 1949. He based his analysis on Hadži-Vasiljević’s work, who, as the first Serbian ethnographer to work on Macedonia and Kumanovo at the beginning of the twentieth century, described the town of Kumanovo as a “pleasant” place that grew out of a small village and turned into a typical Turkish kasaba (settlement) (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909). This chapter builds on the work by Hadži-Vasiljević as well; his study was based primarily on his own observations of contemporary practices, oral history, and narratives that described past times. Written from an obvious Serbian perspective, his primary intention was to capture the disappearing traditional life at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite the obvious bias, the book, entitled South Old Serbia, provides an interesting ethnographic description of Kumanovo and the rural surroundings in which the villages and their hamlets, called maala, were without exact order or planning. While most were usually named according to the dominant kin living in the maalo, they might be named based on their geographic position, such as Upper Maalo, Lower Maalo, or White-Water Maalo (ibid.: 202). The section of the analysis on popular con-

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sciousness begins by stressing the five-century-old Turkish oppression that had strongly affected the rural population around Kumanovo, precluding a “highly developed” consciousness. People, he describes, were “uneducated,” on a very low “civilizational level.” He stresses, however, that Albanians were the same as the other ethnicities—there was no clear distinction among the different ethnicities, except the close connection between the Slavic people that made them feel “inseparably connected to the Serbian people, as being one of them” (ibid.: 280), a statement that indicates the territorial claims Serbia had toward the territory of Macedonia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hadži-Vasiljević further points out that the Serbian population was aware that the only other ethnic population was Muslim (Albanians, Turks, and Romani people were clustered together). Vlachs, Greeks, and Cherkez were not considered to be part of the Muslim grouping because of their different languages. It is important to note that the Kumanovo dialect is very peculiar, quite distant from both standard Macedonian and standard Serbian (Vidoeski 1962). Because the Christian people in the Kumanovo rural surroundings spoke the same language, they were considered to be “one and the same” (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909: 292). The town of Kumanovo was initially mentioned by Evliya Çelebi, a Turkish traveler in 1660, when he noted it in his itinerary as a marginal place that did not deserve detailed description—in contrast to Skopje, Veles, Štip, Kratovo, or Kriva Palnka, places in central and eastern Macedonia (Urošević 1949). At the time when the Turkish traveler passed through the area, Kumanovo was newly built, almost a village and part of the Skopje district (vilayet). According to the tomb in the mosque’s yard, the Eski Cami (“Old Mosque” in Turkish) was built in 1659 (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909). Kumanovo’s importance skyrocketed at the beginning of the seventeenth century when, during the Austro-Turkish war in 1689, the leader of the uprising in the northern part of Macedonia declared himself to be king of Kumanovo (Kralot od Kumanovo) (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909; Urošević 1949). Kumanovo earned its reputation due to its strategic position as an intersection of important trading routes that had its own small commercial center (čaršija). At the beginning of the nineteenth century Kumanovo was called a small town (varošica), and with the revival of the Skopje trading route across the Vardar Valley, Kumanovo began a rapid rise. Although overshadowed by Skopje, which is twenty miles south of Kumanovo, both Hadži-Vasiljević (1909) and Urošević (1949) agree that in the second half of the nineteenth century Kumanovo’s progress was remarkable: from a small village with only six hundred houses in the seventeenth century, very few of which were made of brick, Kumanovo turned into a trading center for the entire vilayet, especially during the rule of Hivzi-Pasha in the nineteenth century.

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Historians, ethnologists, and geographers have agreed that the Muslim population was predominant until 1887. With the outbreak of the Turkish-Serb war, many Muslims left the area (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909; Trifunoski 1974; Urošević 1949). While the early predominance of the Muslim population has been acknowledged in most historical writings on Kumanovo, historians and popular narratives differentiate between the Turks who founded the town and the Albanian population that inhabited it after its foundation (Trifunoski 1988). Many Albanians converted to Islam between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and, as Muslims, were part of the ruling stratum and always identified as Turks (or generally as Muslims) (ibid.: 22). Urošević (1949) provides a more detailed description of the ethnic distinction of the town: the founders of the town were Turkish settlers from Asia Minor. Between 1689 and 1737, during the Austro-Turkish wars, most of the Turks left Kumanovo, and the town almost disappeared. It was in this period that the “incursion” of Albanians took place. Although Urošević mentions that probably many of the Turkish (Muslim) population were from Albania and were Albanian in origin, he nonetheless stresses that the Albanian population arrived from Albania at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries. He makes a distinction between different Muslim ethnicities: Turks, Albanians, Tatars, and Cherkez, who arrived in this area after being expelled from Russia in 1864 (ibid.: 56). The Macedonian (what Hadži-Vasiljević calls Serbian) population started settling in Kumanovo only at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the town began to grow.2 Until the second half of the eighteenth century there was not even an Orthodox Christian priest because of the small number of Christian houses. The bulk of the Christian population settled in Kumanovo between 1878 and 1912. The Greeks moved into the town during the 1847 construction of the St. Nicholas Church. Most of them moved out between the two world wars, and the last household left in 1942. Vlachs (Aromanians) moved into Kumanovo from Kruševo, a town in southern Macedonia, mainly as innkeepers and traders. Roma people consisted of only 200 houses in 1949, equally divided between Muslim and Christian. According to the census conducted in 1921, in which the mother tongue was taken as a main criterion, 2,917 people spoke Turkish, while 641 spoke Albanian (21.8 percent Turkish speakers, 4.8 percent Albanian speakers from the total population of 14,300). The proportion of Turks to Albanians soon shifted, and Albanians gradually came to outnumber Turks (ibid.: 67). According to Kănčov, the town of Kumanovo itself had 7,700 “Bulgarian” Christians, 5,800 Turks, 600 Albanian Muslims, 50 Vlachs, 30 Jews, and 350 Roma (Cigani) (Kănčov 1900: 215). As discussed in chapter 1, massive migrations of the Muslim population occurred after the Balkan wars in 1913, when many Turks and Albanians

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moved to Turkey. Regardless of the migratory movements, Kumanovo continued to grow in the second half of the nineteenth century. Despite its “youth,” Hadži-Vasiljević (1909) writes that the town resembled the other older towns in Macedonia that possess a “proper” distinction between the Turkish and the Serbian (Christian) area.3 The Turkish area had the same characteristics of an old Muslim town prevalent in most of the towns across Macedonia where Turks lived, such as narrow, winding, and short streets, while the Christian part of the town had wider, straighter streets. The Turkish houses were pressed one next to the other, and circled by high walls with large gates (kapii). There were rarely gardens or empty spaces around the houses, except for those few very rich Turks, such as Ali-Efendi, Zaim, and Mula-Jusen. There were twelve neighborhoods (maala) in the town: the Christians were concentrated around the church of St. Nicholas, built in 1847, which is in the southeastern part of the town. Muslims lived in the northern part of town. The western part was the only mixed neighborhood, with both Muslim and Christian populations (ibid.).4 As pointed out earlier, the Eski Cami, which literally translated means the Old Mosque, was built in 1751; with three domes and one minaret, HadžiVasiljević considers it to have been built in the place of a preexisting church. The belief is that the church was turned into a mosque, and that the Christians from the town could still see a cross on one of the domes, “because otherwise the mosque would collapse without the cross to symbolically support it” (1909: 49). Next to the Eski Cami was the clock tower, built at the same time as the mosque, in the mid-eighteenth century, and a Turkish religious primary and middle school (madrassa) (figure 4.1). Across the street was the old amam (Turkish bath). The second mosque, called Jeni Cami (“New Mosque” in Turkish), was built in 1803 and was much smaller than the Eski Cami. The clock tower, the madrassa, the amam, and the Jeni Cami do not exist today. They were destroyed at different times. The Jeni Cami, for instance, was destroyed during the Balkan wars (1912–1913), while the remaining three buildings were destroyed after World War II and deserve more elaborate discussion. In contrast to the visible presence of Islam, the Christian legacy was represented only by one church in the early 1800s. Hadži-Vasiljević (1909) writes about the reluctance of the Turkish officials to allow construction of the church in the early 1800s, when the Sultan Mahmud himself sent a prohibition from Tsarigrad (Istanbul). In general, the Turks from Kumanovo were against the erection of the church until 1842, when there was a Christian uprising against the Turkish and Albanian oppression. Immediately after that, a new church, St. Nicholas, was built in 1851, primarily through donations and voluntary work by the town’s men. During Orthodox Christian holidays women and younger children also participated, often carrying bricks, buckets of sand, or other ma-

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Figure 4.1. The main street in Kumanovo during Turkish times (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo).

terial (ibid.: 42). In 1887, another church, devoted to the Holy Trinity (Sveta Trojca), was erected by Serbian Patriarchists.5 Unlike St. Nicholas, which was built as a cathedral with three naves, the new church was smaller, but more elegant, and built in a Byzantine style. Arguably the most important factor for the development of Kumanovo was the building of the state roads and the railroad in 1873. At the same time, Kumanovo’s territory expanded: the territory that previously belonged to Vranje after 1877–78 began to gravitate toward Kumanovo, attracting merchants not only from Vranje and Kratovo, but also from larger towns such as Skopje and Veles (Urošević 1949). According to Urošević, Kumanovo’s market was most famous for its livestock, mainly sheep grown and fed in the surrounding mountainous regions, and locally produced wheat. As a consequence of the popularity of the sheep and wheat market, the lodging services became well developed: owners of inns and eating places (meani) were mostly Greeks from Janina. Wine and brandy were imported from Skopje because of the bad soil surrounding Kumanovo. Merchants who transferred wine and brandy were mainly from Bašino Selo, a village near Veles. They would come on Wednesday, one day before the market day, then purchase beans, wool, and skins, and finally go back to Veles. They would transport the goods with donkeys. But the real progress of the town began when crafts and trades (zanaeti) started to develop. Until 1877–78 there were only a few, such as one bakery owned by a Greek family, while coal producers, the production of measuring scales

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(terezijski), dying textiles, lable-producers and saddle manufacturing emerged in the subsequent years (ibid.: 57–65). Most of the producers and merchants were geographically and ethnically marked: for instance, the coal producers were from Veles, and the label producers were Vlachs, an ethnic group with a language related to Romanian. The most unusual of these different crafts and trades in Kumanovo were the tripe retailers, which existed until 1925. Urošević (1949) mentions that in the 1930s there were cheese producers, weavers, and four brick factories, and in 1922 two banks were founded. After the first Balkan War in 1912–13, when Kumanovo and the rest of Vardar Macedonia were annexed by Serbia, the Ottoman rule was replaced with the dominance of the Serbian bourgeoisie. An interview with an architect from Kumanovo interested in the history of the town and its architecture revealed that this was the beginning of the new modernist trends, especially in architecture. The architecture of the first decades of the twentieth century was no longer an accomplishment of anonymous builders, but the buildings were built with new construction material, methods, and aesthetic treatment of both the façade and the interior. Individual houses were positioned in a strict linear line aligning the streets of the town. The façade facing the street was more richly decorated with plaster decorations, while a balcony fenced with delicate metal fence became a mandatory detail of the urban style. The size of the individual buildings varied according to the wealth of the owner. Usually the ground floor was commercial space (trading or manufacturing) and the living area was on the upper floors. The interior details that used to be integrated in traditional houses were replaced by manufactured separate pieces of furniture. Another important novelty of the modernism introduced in the first half of the twentieth century was detailed and careful urban planning of the town center. The Serbian senior officers were quite disappointed by the lack of space in the existing Ottoman buildings for the accommodation of their military and civic administrative services as they moved in Macedonian towns after 1912. They immediately commissioned a new urban plan for the town, but due to World War I raging in Europe at the time, the plan could only be realized after 1922 and after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia stabilized its rule. The main engineer/architect of that time was Vladimir Antonov, a Russian immigrant whose talent entitled him to be in charge with the implementation of the plan. He designed or contributed to the design of all the distinguished architectural pieces. The Serbian rule in Kumanovo between 1912 and 1941 introduced several important changes in the topography of the town. A concerted effort was made to counterbalance, even camouflage, the Turkish quarters and to minimize the architectural presence of Islam that had previously dominated the town. This was done by constructing new buildings in a modernist or neohistorical style

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close to the dominant central European styles. Vladimir Antonov built the buildings such as the Zanatski Dom, the Sokolana (the Falcon Hall, a sports pavilion), and the central Krug, a colonnaded venue surrounding the central street where the local government and the mayor were housed (figure 4.2). This row of buildings emerged as the most dominant architectural style, hiding the visibility of Orta Bunar, the oldest Muslim quarter of the town, and encircling the edges of the street by forming an L-shaped inner space called the Butchers’ Circle (Kasapski Krug), which housed 8–10 butchers’ stores. The 1930s were marked by a significant embellishment of the town that followed Western architectural trends. Most of the traditional Turkish inns and covered markets (bezistens) in Macedonian towns were built with arcades and oval, atrium-shaped buildings, a common style for Ottoman architecture. The commercial buildings from the 1930s in Kumanovo did not follow these conventions.6 In 1947, according to the report of the Producers Union, there were 56 different producers and 698 crafts and trades in Kumanovo. Kumanovo really emerged as a manufacturing center with the erection of the Crafts and Trades Building (Zanatski Dom), built in 1927. Until World War II this was the largest and most beautiful building in the town, occupying the central plaza. In total, including producers and service providers, Kumanovo had 1,330 stores.

Figure 4.2. The main street in Kumanovo between World War I and II (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo).

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After World War II, and after socialist collectivization, most of these craftsmen and tradesmen remained as private proprietors. The Yugoslav system also formed a communal union (zadružen sistem) where the craftsmen and tradesmen could join together as a collective body. Gradually, however, state-owned factories overtook the production of particular goods (Urošević 1949).

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Ruptures of the present: Socialism, Islam, and ensuing (in)visibilities The socialist ideology in Yugoslavia, which was deeply rooted in the processes of urbanization and industrialization, considered the “ideal-type” socialist city to be a combination of economic efficacy, social justice, access to urban goods and services, and a high quality of life for the urban population (Smith 1996). This model, however, was better achieved in new towns than in those that had an inherited urban legacy. Kumanovo, with its Ottoman and central European architectural legacy, underwent massive changes in order to accommodate the new socialist ideology. The only way to place the newly built and “mandatory” socialist mansions in the center of towns was to destroy several central buildings such as the old bezisten, where the new House of Culture (Kulturen Dom) was built in the 1960s. The old market was also destroyed, and the largest retail store, NAMA (Naroden Magazin, or People’s Magazine), was erected in its place, which became required in every socialist urban center. The new socialist power, with its urban-based ideology, aimed to control the cities and to govern the country from there. Urban and regional planning—like other state socialist policies—relied on negotiations between politicians, bureaucrats, and experts from which the general public was excluded (Enyedi 1996). The socialist project in Yugoslavia was ultimately one of modernization, where religion would play a minimal role. This (unofficially) accounts for the destruction of the clock tower, the amam, and the madrassa; according to several officials working on Kumanovo’s urban planning, the destruction had nothing to do with Islam per se but with a repudiation of religion in general. The public rumors spread in the town claim these venues were destroyed during the street battles in 1944. However, I was told that pictures and official documents suggest that the end of the war and the liberation parades had been performed alongside both the clock tower and the amam. Some of the people I interviewed involved in the local government during the 1960s and 1970s believe that the destruction of these buildings was primarily an antireligious act. They insist that the Yugoslav socialist government destroyed many churches too. This destruction was conducted in the name of socialist ideology stripped of any religious elements. In Kumanovo, however, the main Orthodox churches remained intact, while the clock tower and the amam were demolished and re-

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placed with apartment blocks and the building that houses the current music school. Most of my Albanian interlocutors believe that the destruction was a planned anti-Albanian and anti-Muslim act. An Albanian high school history teacher pointed out that the presence of Albanians was troubling during socialist Yugoslavia, and has continued to be an even larger problem after the 1991 independence of Macedonia. We conducted the interview in a teahouse (čajdzilnica) in Orta Bunar, a place visited only by men. I felt very awkward throughout, given that a dozen men were staring at us and following every word we exchanged. The size of the teahouse did not allow for a private conversation, and the people sitting nearby could clearly hear everything we said. Fekim bitterly expressed his views, stressing that Albanians and Islam in Kumanovo had suffered tremendously. Many people fondly remembered the buildings that were destroyed after World War II. Hatice, for instance, a seventy-six-yearold woman attended the madrassa when she received her primary education and learned to speak Turkish in the school. Ramo, a seventy-two-year-old man from Kumanovo, also remembers the amam vividly; it was there where he and his siblings would come to bathe. When he was growing up, his family did not have a bathroom, and this was the place where people would have their weekly baths. The interviews I conducted with the town’s officials did not identify the specific reasons for the destruction of the buildings. One of the members, who chaired several committees that created urban plans during the 1950s and evaluated which buildings should be destroyed, mentioned that the poor condition of these buildings was the main reason for their demolition. Their restoration would be too costly and could not be afforded; therefore, the urban planners were forced to tear them down. A Macedonian architect openly disclosed her view that the main market street in the town was lined with too many Islamic markers, which needed to be erased: With all these Turkish buildings, you’d have a feeling that you are in a Turkish town: the mosque, the amam, the madrassa, the clock tower … The Ottoman architecture was not very decorative … Not as the Western renaissance style is. It is more backward, less civilized. I don’t think it is a big architectural loss if you destroy a simple Islamic building and try to replace it with something more modern.

It is evident that for many Macedonians the Turkish (Ottoman) past is synonymous with Islam. Given that this street had become the central artery for the socialist architectural representation, where the post office and the court of justice building were erected in the 1960s (figure 4.3), it was important to erase the Ottoman past as much as possible. The rows of socialist residential

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buildings along the central street and official state buildings such as the town hall (Opština) and the post office also cover up Jeni Maalo. Indeed, during socialism Kumanovo raised itself to higher urban grounds than prior to World War II. It emerged as an important industrial and urban center. One of the first socialist residential buildings (built for the military personnel of the town) was erected along the main market street on the west side, across from the town hall, where the old amam stood before 1948. These buildings have seven stories and tower over the old Muslim houses in the Orta Bunar district. Only the Jami district around Jeni Cami remains uncovered by socialist residential blocks. The central boulevard, typical of most cities in Macedonia during socialism, passes near the farmers’ market. It is one of the few places where the Albanian residential quarters are not hidden behind socialist residential blocks. The central districts in Kumanovo, where many Albanians live, remain “invisible.” An interview with an official from the socialist planning committee in Kumanovo pointed out that the local government complied with the requirements of the Macedonian government regarding the spatial division of the town. The town was to have the several main socialist buildings resembling those in ev-

Figure 4.3. The main street in Kumanovo in the 1960s, with the buildings of the Opština and the post office (photo courtesy of Naroden Muzej Kumanovo).

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ery other Macedonian large town: court of justice building, post office, the socialist party central committee building, the retail store NAMA, the people’s bank, and the House of the Yugoslav National Army (Dom na JNA). Buildings of cultural importance such as the library, the museum, and the cinema were neglected, whereas the Kulturen Dom was the center of cultural happenings, especially during celebrations of Yugoslav socialist holidays. Socialism (1945–91) elevated Kumanovo to an important and well-developed center of northern Macedonia; its infrastructure thus improved significantly. A modern water pipeline was introduced in 1958–59, and the complex road networks, including the central freeway, Bratstvo-Edinstvo (Brotherhood and Unity), which runs throughout Yugoslavia, facilitated Kumanovo’s economic growth. The collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, however, caused a collapse of the town’s industry. The embargo with Greece, the sanctions against Serbia, the blocked communication with the other Yugoslav republics, and civil war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina caused severe economic crisis throughout Macedonia, and Kumanovo faced economic decline. Although highly questionable as an abrupt and radical cut (see, e.g., Berdahl 2005), the shift from the socialist to the post-1991 system induced massive changes in the town’s spatial terrain. The post-socialist division of space has altered the previous urban landscape of socialism which rested between its squares and monumental places. The commercialism introduced after 1991 resembled both of the more organized Western variety, and also in forms that are more reminiscent of the “bazaar economies of the Third World” (Andrusz, Harloe, and Szelâenyi 1996). The period since 1991 has been marked by fast readaptation of the preexisting socialist official buildings into commercialized space. The central committee building of the local Communist party branch in Kumanovo, for instance, houses a private TV station owned by a supporter of the nationalist right-wing party. It also hosts three coffee houses that are constantly crowded with people and bursting with loud music. Similarly, the Kulturen Dom, in the center of the town and built in the place of a former market center, is sublet to two of the most popular cafés in town. The space is usually rented for a longer period of time, allowing the renters to restore and change the buildings’ interiors (and often the exteriors too), adding to it or demolishing it in ways that serve their purposes. Moreover, the central park area that surrounds the Kulturen Dom has also been appropriated by one of the coffee shops—first it was a summer garden for his coffee shop, and during my research it was turned into an sales lot for European cars, with a gleaming Peugeot squeezed inside the glass aquarium-like display space. Thus, the frontal view of the Kulturen Dom, in the central area of the town, was dominated by Marlboro and Peugeot billboards. Cafés and restaurants are the most popular and visible forms of private businesses. Since 1991 Kumanovo has been flooded with night bars and cafés

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that have luxurious interiors. The traditional teahouses (čajdzilnici) scattered around the farmers’ market and in Orta Bunar and frequented by Albanian men are still popular (although considered old-fashioned). However, the young people I talked to find them “boring because they are still reserved for male-only visitors.” The new kafiči (“little cafés” in Serbian), in contrast, are frequently visited by young Albanian women, usually in groups or accompanied by male relatives. A story I often heard from Macedonians is that the kafani—modestly decorated places where people used to meet over drinks and food—have disappeared. In most of the public places for socialization it has become imperative to have luxurious interiors. Several people pointed out that the new fashion destroyed the spirit of friendship and communication among people. This was especially pointed out to me in relation to the famous place called “7.” Many of my Albanian and Macedonian neighbors and interlocutors shared their memories of “7” in the 1980s. They socialized with each other regardless of their ethnic differences. “7” was opened in 1983 by a half-Albanian and half-Turkish man, and soon became the most popular place for intellectuals and artists to visit. Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, and Turks visited it for socializing with “kindred souls.” Several friends from different ethnicities of a similar generation who became close friends and important for my fieldwork stressed that “7” was especially important in the 1980s, when Macedonians, Serbs, Albanians, and Roma visited it. “Mixed” relationships, usually between Macedonian women and Albanian men, took place in “7,” and it acquired a reputation as being a safe space where members of different ethnicities could meet and develop intimate relationships. In the period between 1983, when the bar/café opened, and 1991, “7” was a center of social life that attracted intellectuals and bohemians even from Skopje. In the 1980s, many young people from the same generation who were in college and were also involved in the rich alternative movement that had spread across Yugoslavia “appropriated” “7” as their main gathering place. Since 1991, however, the spirit of “7” changed drastically. Its interior followed the new polished trend: expensive furniture, art reproductions in goldplated frames, and loud music. Tanja, one of the closest people I worked with, often remarked that the need for verbal communication seemed to be failing not only between Macedonians and Albanians, but also as a mode of communication among members of the same ethnicity. When I visited the place for the first time in the fall of 1999, a month after the NATO bombardment of Serbia, I was also struck by the atmosphere: dim light, people from different generations, foreigners (mainly KFOR soldiers), and unbearably loud music that precluded any conversation. I could not notice a trace of the descriptions and mood that had been reported to exist among those who attended the café in the 1980s and early 1990s.

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In my field notes, I recorded that in many places communication and conversation were reduced to a minimum or entirely replaced with loud music. It was Tanja’s impression too that the fashion of the people in the bars, the expensive interiors, and the latest Western music had replaced the previous conversation and relationships among people. Most of the bars and cafés stayed open until 3 , disturbing the lives of the people in the surrounding areas because of the noise. It was pointless, I was told, to complain or call the police, since most of the owners of the nightclubs had connections with the police force, usually by paying bribes to continue. The pressure of competition forced the owners to follow the decoration trend, accompanied by fancy lighting, visual effects, and an expensive audio-sound system. Dragan, an owner of a café, revealed that since 1991 the most decisive factor for success was an expensive interior: If you try to improvise and start a place without the flashy interiors you have no chance to survive. Today if the interior does not “smell” of money, it does not attract young people. The taste of crowds has changed. To start a kafič you need enormous wealth because an expensive interior is the key to success.

An Albanian owner similarly mentioned the new taste of Albanians. The modest teahouses were not “cool” anymore. The flashier the interior, the more attractive the place becomes. Designed by professional interior designers, most of these places were furnished with furniture usually imported from Greece or Italy.

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Reshaping space and architecture: Material visibility of the “Other” In the last section of this chapter I return to Walter Benjamin. In his attempt to destroy the “mythic immediacy” of the present and go beyond the affirmation of the present as a culmination of the cultural continuum, Benjamin claimed to be a historical detective who could unveil historical knowledge, which is the only antidote for the dreamlike state of consciousness pervading the present—a time of (post) industrial modernity and conspicuous consumption (Benjamin 1999; Buck-Morss 1989). The relationship between space and material objects, along with the post-1991 ideology of consumption and the market economy, allowed a rise of ongoing desires and fantasies to be constantly produced and reproduced. These, along with the predominant ideology of nationalism in the Balkans since 1991, have dwelled within and between ownership claims of social and national spaces. Moreover, nationalism as a dominant ideology affects, even regulates space in Kumanovo into a rigid category that seemingly isolates people of different ethnicities into fixed compartments. Yet, these compartments are imaginary—stable only in the historical memory of the inhabitants

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of the town. Space was reshaped during socialism when Macedonians occupied the central districts, had more money, and dominated the apartment blocks. After 1991, this Albanian “invisibility” began to change. The market economy and the financial help of relatives from abroad allowed many Albanians to earn well, become rich, and display their wealth through material objects. The emergence of Divo Naselje corroborates how Albanians have created a vibrant urban space in the town. This, in turn, fuels Macedonian experiences of loss, and generates fantasies that Albanians are “wild.” The saying that if it is a big house, it must be “Šiptarska” (derogatory for the adjective Albanian) reveals the view (and often the despair) that Macedonians feel in the face of rich Albanians. Ironically, the managers of the socialist firms—mainly Macedonians—who have become rich by appropriating previously state-owned property have also built conspicuous houses in a district called Zelen Rid (“Green Hill” in Macedonian). An Albanian friend mentioned in one of our conversations that it would be much more appropriate for Zelen Rid to be called Divo Naselje, because this district is “wild, built from the wealth stolen from the people who had worked during Yugoslavia times. The new and rich houses in Divo Naselje or Orta Bunar were erected primarily with the help of the Albanian diaspora and relatives who work hard, leave their bones abroad, and don’t see daylight throughout their lives” (Gi ostavaat koskite vo tugina i bel den ne gledaat cel život). The dualism between “wild” and “civilized” has been reinforced through the symbolic meaning of Islam, which is linked with the Ottomans, foreign oppressors associated with “backwardness and lack of civilization.” Orthodox Christianity, on the contrary, has signified “civilization” and an ethical stance. It is also considered the “domestic” (autochthonous) religion. Since the 1920s (in the period following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire), Islam continuously signified backwardness. But the contemporary symbolic space reveals the opposite: the houses built by Albanians are modern, richly decorated, and often made with style. In addition to this, as I argued in the previous chapter, another crucial factor that disturbs the balance of power along spatial lines in the town is that many ethnic Albanians now live in apartment blocks—something that was extremely rare during socialism. Their presence thus becomes more visible, while young emancipated women contradict the prevailing belief that Albanians are backward. While I was repeatedly told that Macedonians live on one side of the main street, Albanians on the other, and Roma people live in the ghetto near the small river, I was struck by the fact that the town’s population markedly deviated from the prescribed schema along many lines, most notably ethnic ones. It became clear that those narratives were imaginary. And yet, this spatial delineation of the town’s topology predominates the rhetoric of most of the Albanians

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and Macedonians I talked to, because their vision of Kumanovo is still firmly rooted in a national(istic) framework. The fact that the population has become more mixed and similar is negated and denied. The stories that Albanians have an organized plan for conquering the town by taking over its most prestigious locales remain dominant phantasmic narratives. A Macedonian architect told me that the center would soon be entirely Albanian:

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They have a very precise way of pursuing their intentions to assimilate us, to draw us out of our town. One would pay an enormous amount of money to get to a certain district. Several others would follow. This community of few houses is so aggressive and holds so tight that the other non-Albanian population moves away. It is impossible to withstand their tricks and strategies to drive everyone out from their demarcated zone that needs to be conquered … What started with a very high price of the real estate for the first who moved ends up with almost giving away, without getting even the minimum of what the house is worth. But they set the rules now … And this is a repeating schema. Once they spread their hands, it is difficult to stop them, to fight them in any way.

Nationalism as a dominant form of ideology in post-1991 Macedonia serves as a binding cement that ties together space and material signifiers (such as specific buildings). The peculiar position of Kumanovo near the Macedonian, Serbian, and Kosovo borders, and, which, according to the 2002 census is populated with 60.5 percent Macedonians, 25.8 percent Albanians, 5.7 percent Roma, and 6.7 percent Serbs, reinforces the nationalistic views among its majority. The link between nationalism and its spatial and visual layout is multilayered, perpetuating ethnic tension and spatial, linguistic, and cultural divisions in the town. Skopje, as the capital of Macedonia and a city struck by a devastating earthquake in 1963 (killing 1,076 and destroying an estimated 80 percent of downtown Skopje), has developed an architectural “discontinuity” due to this natural catastrophe. The earthquake and the necessity to rebuild the city turned out to be an “excellent” opportunity to test an entirely new Yugoslav-modernist project loaded with ideological intentions to confirm Yugoslavia’s non-alligned position on the world, and make Skopje a symbol of “world solidarity.” Skopje was rebuilt with the financial aid of both Western capitalist countries (Sweden, Italy, Spain, and the United States) and Eastern socialist ones (Hungary, the Soviet Union, and Poland). The old neoclassical style was replaced with a new socialist style that intended to keep the “capitalist” past apart from the Yugoslav present. The old theater and the Officers’ House, which dominated the embankment of the river Vardar in the center of the city, were replaced with new, administrative socialist buildings (e.g., the central post office). And yet, the old Turkish čaršija (market) was reconstructed, and the old Ottoman buildings were mostly kept and restored on the left bank of the river Vardar. Most of the

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Ottoman architecture was destroyed before World War II, when Macedonia was part of Serbia. In the case of Kumanovo, without natural destruction of that scale, the town has experienced another form of ideological destruction of its architecture. Hence, it has become an “ugly” and strange mixture of architectural denial and confirmation, a negation and affirmation of previous times.7 I noticed from the very outset of my fieldwork that the town had been undergoing a lot of construction and reconstruction. The massive construction work, however, had left people from Kumanovo with a very negative feeling about the overall urban outlook and infrastructure of the town. One of the predominant narratives of ethnic Macedonians was that the town had exceeded any criteria of urban planning; that the infrastructure was awful, mainly destroyed by the “invasion” of the “wild” people—Albanians from Kosovo and the surrounding villages. This narrative—that the newly arrived Albanians from nearby villages were guilty for the ugliness of the town—predominates the narratives not only of Macedonians but also of urban settlers from any ethnicity, thus making class rather than ethnicity an explanation for the weak urban planning of the town. This, along with ongoing criticism of and disbelief in the state, the politicians, and their ability to “regulate and institute a legal framework,” remains an ongoing narrative among people from different class, ethnic, and gender backgrounds.

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Conclusion This chapter analyzes how space and architectural representation of different ideologies in Kumanovo affect people’s views of each other. This representation could be viewed as “space wars” within the town, revealing of the layering and relayering of architectural aesthetics as part of the means to render some things visible while others are obscured within public space. Massive changes have been occurring in Kumanovo: from how the Turkish and Muslim buildings were obscured, destroyed, or converted during the socialist period, to the haphazard and chaotic way that urban design has proceeded in the post-Yugoslav period. I have shown that space in the town is created and conceptualized along several divisive axes such as religion, class, and ethnicity. To grasp the complexities of everyday reality in Kumanovo, one needs to follow Benjamin and perform the role of a “historical detective” who strips history of its legitimizing, ideological function. But indeed, “if history is abandoned as a conceptual structure that deceptively transfigures the present, its cultural contents are redeemed as the source of critical knowledge that alone can place the present into question” (Buck-Morss 1989: x). Benjamin’s (1999) goal to take historical materialism so seriously that historical phenomena themselves are brought to speech, in

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my view, remains most helpful method when examining materiality of space and architectural representations that then reveal ruptures, shifts, and changes otherwise masked by historicism and contemporary political realities. Benjamin’s The Arcades Project (1999) allows us to think through the architectural transformations of the small town: the architecture may have been replaced from one moment to the next, but it is never possible to entirely erase what came before, either spatially or in speech. Taussig describes how traces of lost eras remain active in present times “hanging on the wall, covering the windows, not to mention the couch on which you sit or the dress that you will wear tonight” (2009: 145). By “redeeming indigo,” Taussig writes that “names such as damask or muslin carry with them a tremor … Stripped of their history no less then of their place-reference, such as Damascus in Syria or Mosul in Iraq, they have become naught but names, less than names, really, just sounds, we might say, yet for all of that, and because of that, something else hovers in the aura that the sounds can, on occasion provoke” (ibid.: 145). Similarly, the names in Kumanovo, peppered with Turkish, still betray the past where the dusty ruins remain, pointing to the ultimate mortality of any hierarchy or rule that was once to be forever.8 It can be successfully argued that any ideological project always aspires toward the conquest of space. This tendency has been amply shown in Brasilia and Los Angeles (Davis 1992; Holston 1989). The earthquake in 1963, which destroyed much of the downtown area, allowed Tito and the Yugoslav government to make Skopje a playground for the Yugoslav experiment—a unique architectural design that would validate Yugoslavia as having neither a Western nor an Eastern orientation, the “socialism with a human face.” I will discuss later how Skopje has been an object of (and involved in) an aesthetic and political project of “revival” aiming to rebrand the “face” of Macedonia and the capital city itself (Dimova 2009). The Marxist philosopher of space Henri Lefebvre analyzed urban space as a social system that is produced through the primacy of economic relations (Lefebvre 1991). For Lefebvre, the inhabitants of a city have a right to contest this tendency, a “right to the city” itself. Similarly, Michel de Certeau ([1974] 1984) emphasized the “user” of space, describing everyday practices (including cultural productions) that appropriate spaces to ends other than those for which they were intended. The space of the town of Kumanovo, with its particular historical narrative of origins, has been radically contested since 1991 by the Albanian minority, which has more access than previously to both economic and symbolic capital. As explained in chapter 1, the class mobility of Albanians has been fostered through diasporic transnational connections, induced as an effect of the structural isolation and marginalization of Albanians during socialism. This mobility has allowed many Albanians to open private businesses and participate in the market economy of independent post-1991 Macedonia,

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and to display their newly acquired wealth by building large houses and indulging in conspicuous consumption. The presence of wealthy Albanians has revealed social ruptures for (and among) many Macedonians, whose economic decline and loss of privileges has generated narratives about “wild” and “dangerous” Albanians. The overlaps between religion, nationality, and ethnicity in the conceptual and ideological rearrangements discussed in this chapter again bring us to an assertion that any fixations are impossible. While the Ottoman period mostly distinguished groups by religious affiliation, in the period following the collapse of that regime, religious affiliation became blended with different understandings of nations and of peoples. The conflicting and, at times, odd blending of these diverse approaches toward the basis of public social identity beg the question of if religion, ethnicity, or nationality are the same or different. And again, I would suggest that their articulation is always fluid, impossible to be fixed, despite the tendency of different regimes and eras to reify and naturalize these shifting concepts. Paradoxically, the more ethnically divided Macedonians and Albanians have become, the more closely intertwined in the domain of social space they are. This is precisely the contradiction of the contemporary nation-state regime (especially valid for the new, post-1991 “democracies”)—the more integrated in the transnational space the state is, the more it is required to “embody” and display a distinct national “essence.”

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Notes 1. In Macedonian, naselba is the term for neighborhood. The colloquial dialect in Kumanovo uses the Serbian term naselje but often people use the Turkish term maalo. The Kumanovo dialect is a rich mixture of Macedonian and Serbian terms, with unique syntax common in the areas of northern Macedonia and southern Serbia (Urošević 1949). 2. Urošević’s account of Kumanovo, which was written in 1947 after the formation of Socialist Yugoslavia, uses the term Macedonians, given that the nation was already recognized as separate with its own republic in the 1943 constitution of the federation in Jajce. 3. Kumanovo was then part of Serbia, so Hadži-Vasiljević does not use the term Macedonian, but instead uses the term Serbian to point to the differences between the Muslim and Orthodox Christian population. 4. The story of the origin of the town is that Bislim-beg moved to this area and that the first Turkish descendants were from this beg (a Turkish aristocratic title). There are different versions regarding the name Kumanovo. One version states that it derives from the Turkish word komaova, which means enemies, because of the long battles between the Turks and Serbs in this area. Another version is that the name comes from the village of Kumanichevo, whose population deserted it and settled in the region of contemporary Kumanovo.

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5. In 1890, when the Bulgarian exarchy was established by Constantinople, struggles erupted all over the territory of Macedonia between the Exarchists and the Patriarchists, who were supporters of the Serbian or Greek Patriarchate. The St. Nicolas Church was won by the Exarchists on 18 April 1897 (Urošević 1949). 6. In an interview, an architect from Kumanovo explained to me that whereas in the West arcades have become the hallmark of modernity, in the areas under Ottoman rule arcades were associated with Islamic architecture. Modernity in the Balkans, therefore, was represented by architectural forms that differed from elements prevalent during or associated with Ottoman rule. 7. When a friend of mine from Hungary came to visit me in Kumanovo in the first month of my fieldwork, he was flabbergasted when I told him that Kumanovo, with more than thirty active urban planning firms, was one of the architectural centers of Macedonia. “It is so ugly; one could never imagine that the town has architects at all.” I, myself, had a similar impression in the very first week of my fieldwork. I was meeting mainly architects, and I was surprised by their number: in Kumanovo alone there are more than a dozen architectural studios/offices (proektanski biroa). 8. For a similar process in Komotini, Northern Greece see Demetriou (2006).

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References Andrusz, Gregory, Michael Harloe, and Ivan Szelenyi. 1996. Cities after Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-socialist Societies. Oxford: Blackwell. Benjamin, Walter. 1994. Illuminations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1999. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Berdahl, Daphne. 2005. “Introduction.” In Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, ed. Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl and Martha Lapland, 1–13 Daphne Berdahl. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Buck-Morss, Susan. 1989. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Certeau, Michel de. [1974] 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davis, Mike. 1992. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Books. Demetriou, Olga. 2006. "Streets Not Named: Discursive Dead Ends and the Politics of Orientation in Intercommunal Spatial Relations in Northern Greece." Cultural Anthropology 21:295–321. Dimova, Rozita. 2009. “Izgradnje nacije vs. brendiranje nacije,” in Izazovi Savremenog Crnogorskog Identiteta, ed. Sasa Nedeljković, 23–47. Kruševac: Baštinik. Enyedi, Gyorgy. 1996. “Urbanization under Socialism.” In Cities after Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-socialist Societies, ed. Gregory Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Ivâan Szelâenyi, 100–118. Oxford: Blackwell. Hadži-Vasiljević, Jovan. 1909. Kumanovoska Oblast (Kniga Prva). Belgrade: Kolarac. Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasâilia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kănčov, Vasil. 1900. Makedonija: Etnografija i statistika. Sofia: Blgarsko Kniževno Društvo. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Smith, David. 1996. “The Socialist City.” In Cities after Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-socialist Societies, ed. Gregory Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Ivan Szelenyi, 70-99. Oxford: Blackwell. Taussig, Michael. 2009. What Color Is the Sacred? Chicago: Chicago University Press. Trifunoski, Jovan F. 1974. Kumanovska oblast; seoska naselja i stanovništvo. Skopje: Privatno piščevo izdanje. ———. 1988. Albansko stanovništvo u Socijalističkoj Republici Makedoniji: Antropogeografska i etnografska istraživanja. Belgrade: NIRO “Književne novine.” Urošević, Atanasie. 1949. Kumanovo. Skopje: Godišen Zbornik na Filozofskiot Fakultet vo Skopje. Vidoeski, Božidar. 1962. Kumanovskiot govor. Skopje: Institut za Makedonski Jazik.

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CHAPTER 5

E The Baroque effect Central Skopje between antiquitization and Christianization

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I

argued in the previous chapter that the residents of Divo Naselje in Kumanovo have been reconfiguring their living space and redefining the meaning of “wild.” For many households from this district, the access to wealth and the increased consumption power has been manifested through conspicuously decorated and large houses. The material presence of these houses, along with the effects they have had on the other residents of the town of Kumanovo, could be viewed as part of the “Baroque mechanism” (Lambert 2004). Building on the writings of Jose Antonio Maravall, Lambert elaborates on this mechanism and defines it as an element of aesthetic experience where an “operative,” “instrumental,” and “guiding” feature of this mechanism is to move the spectator and to unleash feelings of wonder, amazement, or disorientation (ibid.: 28). Often, this move also evokes “subjective apprehension” similar to the notion of force found in the psychoanalytic concepts of trauma and repression. “Consequently, the more the subject loses perception and lapses into a state of dependence signified by the emotions of wonder and astonishment, the more commanding the significance of the event becomes” (ibid.: 28). Indeed, I noticed an element of this in the reactions that many people had to the large houses owned by Albanians in Divo Naselje. The ability of the houses’ presence to move the spectators also triggers “subjective apprehension,” and consequently inflames antagonistic, nationalist, even racist explanations of the “wild” and “illegal” origin and character of these houses and their owners. This sublime effect of the Baroque mechanism could, in effect, be at work in other situations, when the size and outlook of materiality may suddenly affect the observer and thus shape how people view each other. In this chapter I would like to build on this sublime mechanism and examine the Baroque effect initiated by (and through) the colossal rearrangement of public space in central Skopje, an ideological project cemented by the ongoing

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“revival” (prerodba) since 2006 that places Baroque aesthetics at the center of its tenacious materiality. First I will discuss the political context that initiated the revival, as well as the spatial and architectural rearrangements that took place. Then I will move to the reactions, represented by the media, to the new sites that have been proposed and erected. Last, I will delineate how “antiquitization” and “Christianization” have become the two main ideological engines that, fueled by the dispute with Greece over the name Macedonia and the 2001 conflict with Albanian insurgents, have been driving the revival.

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Engineering the “real human”: The revival, 2006–present In February 2010 the government promoted an animated video entitled “Skopje 2014,” which was a visualization of an aesthetic and political project for the new material landscape of the center of Skopje. A plethora of new buildings, monuments, and embellishments would enhance the central cityscape, primarily around the main square, Macedonia, and the embankment of the river Vardar.1 The new aesthetic components featured in the video are part of the ongoing “revival,” a political undertaking that originated with the VMRO-DPMNE’s political victory in the 2006 elections and the defeat of the social democrats. This initiative gradually turned into a well-crafted political and ideological platform that acquired full-blown power during the 2008 early elections, when the main electoral program of VMRO-DPMNE was entitled “Prerodba vo 100 cekori” (Revival in 100 Steps). The revival outlined a series of economic, political, and cultural promises aiming to improve the overall life of the nation. The main guidelines of the revival derive from the principal doctrine of the party, which frames the philosophical, ethical, and conceptual principles of VMRODPMNE’s activity as a political party. The doctrine states the revival to be the end of the fifteen years of transition that started in 1991 with the independence of the republic. The consecutive rule of the Social Democratic Alliance (SDSM)—with the exception of the period between 1998 and 2002, when VMRO-DPMNE and the Democratic Alternative won the 1998 elections— was viewed by the right-wing demo-Christians in the VMRO-DPMNE as a continuation of the socialist legacy, detrimental not only to the economic well-being of the citizens, but especially disadvantageous for the preservation of Macedonian national identity. The revival introduced in 2006–7 thus aimed at correcting the lingering socialist “anomalies” by introducing (and producing) radically different views of the society and its members. According to this doctrine, the basic unit of the society should be a “real human”: different from the socialist universal subject or artificial uniformity, false ethics of socialist collectivism, but rather about a real human as part of family and community which he strongly believes in. While the starting point of the leftist

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revolutionary view was “the new human,” the conservatism of VMRO-DPMNE seeks that politics to deal with a real human, the way we meet him and with whom we share life intricacies. The real human of VMRO-DPMNE is a creature of freedom, patriotism, and religious belief. The real human is hard working and responsible for his family and the future of his children. (VMRO-DPMNE n.d., my translation)

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The engineering of such real human subjects was the aim of the party’s political program since their victory in 2006 under the leadership of Nikola Gruevski, the main architect of the revival. Regarded as an accomplished economist and financial expert who introduced and successfully implemented the VAT law in 2000 (DDV—Zakon za Danok so Dodadena Vrednost), Gruevski’s political career started as a minster of finances in Ljupčo Georgievski’s government from 1998 to 2002. One of the people closest to Georgievski, the then president of VMRO-DPMNE and the prime minister, after the 2002 election loss Gruevski gradually pushed Georgievski from the party leadership, initiating a process of party factionalism centered around himself and those loyal to him.2 Gruevski emerged as a new leader of VMRO-DPMNE, who successfully led the party to victory in 2006, and to the two subsequent early elections in 2008 and 2011. A skillful strategist who started as an economic expert, Gruevski reshuffled the focus of the revival, and one of the largest monetary expenditures in the budget was allocated to refurnish the major urban centers in Macedonia, especially in Skopje, the capital of the country, in the years to come. It has become clear that the revival aimed at engineering the “real human,” the postsocialist subject, by creating a new material reality and aestheticizing political power, which would offer a new face or image to the entire country.3

Aestheticized materiality of power The construction of some of the most prominent buildings in central Skopje had already begun in 2008. Although the video “Skopje 2014” was promoted in February 2010, several government and public buildings placed on the river Vardar were already in the process of construction. The buildings of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Archaeological Museum which would also accommodate the Constitutional Court are situated on the bank of the river Vardar, near the plateau of the Macedonian Opera and Ballet (figure 5.1). In 2010 this location also became a building site for the headquarters of the central district attorney and the financial police, which is constructed in a cylinder-like form with classical columns of 9.620 meters. This building was awarded to the Macedonian building firm Beton, which claimed it would employ between 150 and 200 construction workers until the completion of the building, scheduled for the end of 2011. Around the same time, the council of the city of Skopje

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Figure 5.1. Construction activity on the bank of the river Vardar in Skopje for the project “Skopje 2014” in 2011 (photo by Jane Stojanoski).

announced a bid for a major reconstruction of the façades of the buildings built during the socialist period, especially after the 1963 earthquake—those surrounding the central squares Macedonia and Pela and stretching to the Portal Macedonia (Porta Makedonija). The bid stressed that the style of the reconstructed façades should be a matching style (defined as Baroque, classical, neoclassical, Romantic, or neoRomantic), corresponding to the other buildings and monuments in the process of construction. In April 2011, the mayor of Skopje, Koce Trajanovski, victoriously stated in a press statement that this was the beginning of giving Skopje a “new face, a classical face, a face of old Skopje.” He also announced that ten palm trees would be placed on the Vardar embankment, turning it into a city beach. With this act, Skopje would join the other capitals (Paris or Berlin) where city beach projects have been realized in the past several years. A reporter from the A1 TV station ironically commented that by using palm trees and the Baroque style, “the government will attempt to return the old glory of Skopje.” Other government or public buildings planned by the “Skopje 2014” project are a new City House replacing the old Officers’ House (Oficirski Dom), replicating the same style. This building was destroyed during the 1963 earthquake,

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along with the theater, which was also rebuilt and placed on the bank of the river Vardar in 2011. Next to the theater a large venue has been erected, a museum commemorating the Macedonian struggle for independence and statehood (the popular name for this museum is the Museum of VMRO) (figure 5.2). This museum features original documents, constitutions, weapons used during the struggle against the Ottomans and the Fascists, and one hundred wax figures of famous revolutionaries, heroes, and personalities from Macedonian history. It also displays around sixty large paintings depicting battles and sequences from different historical periods that should provide a visual context for the objects exhibited in the museum.4 In addition to the new buildings, in February 2010 there was an open bid for the construction of a large parking structure with nine floors in the central area near the main post office building and the central square of Macedonia. Despina Trajkovska, a journalist in the daily newspaper Utrinski Vesnik closely followed and commented the public debates on the Skopje 2014 project since 2010. She devoted significant space to describing and commenting on the façade of the parking garage was also supposed to be in the style of Baroque but with a modern interior. The urban plan is also considering the construction of a large hotel next to the City House.5 Corresponding with the intention of the

Figure 5.2. The City Beach, the New “Old” Theatre and the Museum of VMRO (photo by Jane Stojanoski).

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government to embellish Skopje was the construction of the Portal Macedonia (figure 5.3), built on the square Pella by the design of the artist Valentina Stefanovska. Rising to 21 meters in height, this construction cost around four million euros and celebrates the twenty years of Macedonian independence. Its façade is embellished with 193 m2 of reliefs carved in marble, depicting scenes from the history of Macedonia. It also contains interior rooms, one of which has a function of state-owned souvenir shop, as well as elevators and stairs providing public access to the roof accessible for panoramic viewing.

Figure 5.3. The Portal “Macedonia” (photo by Dragan Krstevski).

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Part of the new “old” decorations in the Skopje 2014 project is the replacement of the fence on the bridge known as the Iron Bridge, a project that was completed in May 2011 in which a Baroque-style cast-iron fence consisting of 144 assembled elements 3.6 meters long and 1.2 meters high replaced the old simple iron fence. The new fence is connected by pillars, which carry 26 chandeliers (13 on each side) providing ambient lighting. “This remodeling would add to the ongoing embellishment of the city of Skopje and would bring it closer to the world capitals and cosmopolitan centers,” stated an architect involved in the urban planning in an interview with me in May 2011. As a matter of fact, all bridges across the river Vardar have received major cosmetic interventions. The Goce Delčev Bridge was embellished with two pairs of bronze lions mounted on each entrance of the bridge at the end of August 2010. As an official symbol of VMRO-DPMNE, the lion statues on the bridge were placed on 3.5-meter high pedestals decorated with motives from antiquity and the rebellion against the Ottomans (ajdutstvo and komitstvo). The creator of the classical-style lions is Konstantin Janev, while the more modern pair of lions was designed by Elena and Darko Dukovski. Each lion is 5 meters high (8.5 meters with the pedestal) and weighs 5 tons. The casting was conducted in a foundry in Florence and the total price was over 1 million euros. The official inauguration of the lions was on 8 September 2010, the independence day of the Republic of Macedonia. The “Skopje 2014” video promoted another bridge across the river Vardar, situated between the old Stone Bridge and the Iron Bridge. This new bridge, sponsored by the Center Municipality (the largest and most central of Skopje’s six municipalities), is called the Bridge of Arts and will be aligned with twentynine monuments of artists from Macedonia (figure 5.4). Central will be the monument devoted to the brothers Konstantin and Dimitar Miladinovi (the nineteenth-century revivalists born in Struga). In addition there will be statues of painters (Lazar Ličenoski, Nikola Martinoski, Petar Mazev, etc.); writers and intellectuals (Grigor Prličev, Stale Popov, Krste Petkov Misirkov, Kočo Racin, Jordan Hadži Konstantinov-Džinot, Blaže Koneski); actors (Risto Šiškov, Petre Prličko, etc.); and composers and musicians (Vlastimir Nikolovski, Trajko Prokopiev, Todor Skalovski, Stefan Gajdov, Toše Proeski, etc.). The central monument will be three meters high while the others, fourteen on each side, will be two meters high. The main architect of this bridge is Kosta Mangarovski, who was also commissioned for several other items in the “Skopje 2014” project, such as the City House and the new dome to be constructed on the top of the Macedonian parliament. Next to the Bridge of Arts the project envisions an additional bridge, called The Eye Bridge, shaped as an eye and decorated with twenty-nine monuments. Most of the massive aesthetic interventions since 2009, however, have been conducted on the central square of Macedonia. During 2010 and 2011 a num-

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Figure 5.4.  The Bridge of Arts, with twenty-nine monuments of artists from Macedonia (photo by Jane Stojanoski).

ber of monuments have been erected: statues of Goce Delčev and Dame Gruev, both riding horses and placed on each side of the Stone Bridge where one enters the square. In June 2011, a 5-meter tall Tsar Samuil statue was mounted on the square on the opposite side of the Goce Delčev and Dame Gruev monuments. Seated on a 3.5-meter tall pedestal, this monument was casted in two foundries in Italy for the price of 1.5 million euros. The artist Dimitar Filipovski, who sculpted several other monuments in Skopje, was allegedly paid 113,000 euros for this monument only. Another contribution, added in June 2011 to the central square’s colonnade of monuments, is the statue of Justinian I, a 5-meter tall tribute mounted on a 3.5-meter pedestal honoring the Byzantine emperor, born in Skopje in 527 ad. This monument cost 1.2 million euros. By far the most monumental accolade to the “glory of the Macedonian past and present,” however, is the statue entitled Warrior on the Horse. Arriving only nine days after the 5 June early elections in 2011, when VMRO-DPMNE won for a third consecutive time, the statue, which bears a striking semblance to Alexander the Great, was brought into Skopje in several pieces (figure 5.5). Casted in Ferdinando Marinelli, the most prominent artistic foundry in Florence, the Warrior on the Horse was designed by the artist Valentina Stefa-

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Figure 5.5. The monument Warrior on the Horse arriving in pieces in the central square Macedonia in Skopje (photo by Jane Stojanoski).

novska. The media speculated that the cost for the monument reached a figure of 5.3 million euros (650,000 euros were paid to the artist), with an additional 4.1 million euros for the base, consisting of a grandiose fountain aligned with eight warriors from the ancient Macedonian army, each three meters high, and eight lions, four seated facing the square, and four standing facing the fountain, from whose mouths water jets would spring into the basin. The total height of the monument and the fountain is 27 meters. The bronze Warrior on the Horse alone is 14.5 meters high and weighs 30 tons. The official inaugural festivities took place on 8 September 2001, on the twentieth anniversary of Macedonia’s independence (figure 5.6). In an article published in the daily newspaper Utrinski Vesnik on 27 November 2007, the journalist Despina Trajkovska reveals some of the mysteries surrounding the international call for conceptual proposals for Warrior on the Horse. The municipality centar, as main commissioner of the monument, announced that by the deadline in 2007, twenty-six proposals had arrived, but no one received first prize. Two proposals were awarded the second prize, one won the third prize, and two additional proposals were purchased by city officials. The city officials did not reveal who the members of the international selection

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Figure 5.6.  The fountain and the monument Warrior on the Horse (photo by Jane Stojanoski).

committee were, nor did they announce who would be commissioned for the monument, when and where the casting would begin, when would it be ready, or who would carry the financial burden for the monument (figure 5.7). The silence and mysteries surrounding the Warrior on the Horse were, arguably, triggered by the sensitive political situation of the ongoing conflict with Greece over the name Macedonia, a conflict that placed antiquity at center

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Figure 5.7. The central square Macedonia, with the fountain and the monument Warrior on the Horse (photo by Dragan Krstevski).

stage in the revival agenda, especially after the NATO meeting in Bucharest in November 2008. At this meeting, Greece effectively prevented the Republic of Macedonia from receiving an official invitation to become a member, along with Croatia and Albania. It was this political conflict over symbols that fueled the ongoing intention of VMRO-DPMNE to “return the fallen dignity of our great nation and glorious past,” as a fifty-six-year-old art historian employed in the Ministry of Culture told me. “Correcting the mistakes” committed by the previous reign of the social democrats, who received the blame for accepting the acronym FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) in 1991, seems to be part of the mission of the current government, which “makes no compromise regarding the constitutional name of our country.” In the following section I outline the background and the main features of this conflict.

From the name dispute to clashing nationalisms The unavoidable dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1990–91, along with the subsequent wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and the other former Yugoslav republics, threatened the stability of the Balkan region. When the attempt to create a

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loose union between the former Yugoslav republics failed, Macedonia, following Slovenia and Croatia, announced its independence, reflecting the results of a referendum held on 8 September 1991 in which 92 percent of Macedonia’s citizens voted for this political option (Dyker and Vejvoda 1996; Lampe 2000; Ramet 2005; Woodward 1995). Although people in Greece had been closely following events on their northern border, many were outraged when they realized that the socialist republic, once part of the Yugoslav federation, would, on becoming an independent country, carry the name of Macedonia. Arguably, Greece always objected to the use of the name Macedonia (Andriotis 1957), although it reconciled with the fact that Macedonia was used only internally within the Yugoslav federation, whereas all international interaction existed under the designation of Yugoslavia. A large demonstration took place on 20 February 1992 in Thessaloniki, with an unprecedented one million participants, and was the beginning of a long political dispute involving politicians and ordinary people that has yet to be resolved. During the protests, the crowd packed the center of the city of Thessaloniki, expanding well beyond the central streets and squares, carrying banners and exclaiming, “Macedonia is Greek” (I Makedonia einai elliniki). The official Greek position is that there is only one “Macedonia”—Greek Macedonia. No region in the Balkans except the Greek province of Macedonia can be associated or identified with the ancient kingdom of Macedonia and no people, except Greeks, are entitled to call themselves Macedonians, either as a cultural-ethnic or a geographic-regional denomination. Politicians and scholars in Greece have argued that the Hellenic connection of ancient Macedonia should not be called into question. They have also argued that, by usurping the name of Macedonia, the newly independent state to their north was automatically making irredentist claims for the annexation of Greek Macedonia (Voß 2008). Events in the 1990s have revealed the Balkans to be a region with a complex shared history in which a division along national lines has never been (or could be) fully resolved by using a one-people, one-state approach (for more on the complex configuration of the Balkans and of Macedonia, see Berman 1993; Brown 1994; Cowan 2008; Dimova 2006; Friedman 1997: Mazower 2000; Sharp 1997). From the time the Balkan nation-states were created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and shaped by the spread of national ideologies, it has proved impossible to create homogenous national populations by erasing the presence of “others” whose language, religion, or way of life differ from those of the dominant national group. As one of the most heterogeneous and contested regions of the world since Ottoman times, “Macedonia” has served as a mirror onto which Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian nationalisms were projected (Aarbakke 2003). In his analysis of the making of modern Greece, Herzfeld (1982) describes the efforts (and problems) of the newly established Greek state in 1833 to live

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up to the ideas that European intellectuals held of Hellenism and ancient Hellas. The reality that politicians encountered on the ground was quite different from imagined past glories. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the majority of the population was rural and the dominant spoken language was so-called Romeic, which was quite different from the “pure Greek language” (katharevousa) preferred and enforced mainly by intellectual elites (ibid.: 6). In the second half of the nineteenth century, universalistic views of the grandeur of ancient Hellas gradually shifted from a collective historical reference to Western modernity to a Greek national geopolitical claim (Christopoulos and Tsitselikis 2003). This shift required Greek intellectuals to fit the vast rural population into the project of forging historical continuity between modern Greece and ancient Hellas, a project they tried to accomplish by invoking the social scientific disciplines of folklore, anthropology, and archeology to establish Greece as the “cradle of European civilization” (Herzfeld 1982, 2008). It is this struggle to claim historical continuity that determines the power of symbols such as the name Macedonia, Alexander the Great, the Star of Vergina, and Philip II of Macedon. The right to use symbols that refer to the classical past, and which are invoked to bridge the gap between modern and ancient times, comprise one of the central issues in today’s dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia (Brown 1994; Voß 2002). Greek nationalists faced not only the problem of trying to document continuities between ancient and modern Greece, but also of trying to construct a culturally homogenous population, appropriate to the image of a modern nation-state, in a region that had never before existed as a sovereign entity. As Kostopoulos (2003) has argued, the “problem” of minorities became apparent as early as the first census, which was conducted on the eve of independence in 1828. Moreover, it has been successfully argued that minorities did not exist before World War I, because the concept of minority arose along with nationalism (Cowan 2003, 2008; Dimova 2006; Sharp 1997). If a territory is to be defined according to the idea that its residents are culturally homogeneous, then the existence of people who are different will be constituted as a “problem.” This was not the case under the Ottoman regime, which did not require territorial homogeneity (Friedman 1997; Rodrigue 1995). Thus, Greece only had a “minority problem” because minorities were generated at the moment that the Greek nation was generated; they did not preexist. During Ottoman times, afterward and continuing to present day, it has been evident that border areas of the Greek state house minority populations that reveal the state’s heterogeneous character. Despite their almost full assimilation as Greek national subjects, the Jews, Arvanites, Vlachs, and Roma, along with the Slav population in Greek Macedonia (Aarbakke 2003; Karakasidou 1997; Kostopoulos 2003), perceive themselves, and are perceived by others, as different. Similarly, the Cams of northern Epirus (Green 2005) and the Turks,

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Pomaks, and Romani Muslims of northern Thrace (Trubeta 2003; Voss 2003) appear to be people living in the margins. The existence of these “minorities” has made it difficult for the Greek nation-state to project an image of cultural homogeneity. It has constantly had to face the problem of “naming the Other” and of tolerating difference (Kostopoulos 2003). The story of Macedonian nationalism reveals a different trajectory from that of Greece. It was not allowed to exist as a stable political subject until 1944. At that time, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, as part of the Yugoslav federation, was formally encouraged to develop a national identity that would distinguish it from the neighboring republics. The Macedonian language acquired an official orthography in 1945 and became one of the most important national symbols. The state supported a major effort by linguists to create a standard language different from Bulgarian by using the western-central Vardar dialect of Macedonian as a basis for literary Macedonian (Friedman 1975, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1998, 1999; Voß 2001, 2009). Further efforts to construct and produce a distinct national identity were carried out by writers, historians, and folklorists. As part of the “Yugoslav experiment” (Rusinow 1977), which after 1948 and the split between Stalin and Tito was predicated on combining socialist ideals with national distinctiveness, Tito and the Yugoslav government promoted the rise of a Macedonian national identity. At the same time, however, they discouraged nationalist claims to the larger region of Macedonia (Banac 1989; Cowan 2000; Dimova 1999; Grandits 2008; Rossos 2008; Rusinow 1977; Shoup 1968; Voß 2001). The 1990s were also marked by an intensive surge of nationalism in the Republic of Macedonia, which involved stressing Macedonia’s connections with such historical figures as Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. This surge paved the way for the Macedonian parliament to adopt the five-ray Star of Vergina as the official flag of the independent republic in 1992. (It was forced to abandon the symbol in 1995, however, due to strong international pressure.) Although antiquity emerged as an important factor in nation building and since independence in 1991, as I described above, the wave of antiquitization (antikvizacija) sweeping over Skopje’s central public space and the entire country since 2006 is unprecedented indeed. The epic monument of the Warrior on the Horse (or, evidently, Alexander the Great) occupies the most central place in the capital of the country. The same day (14 June 2011) that this monument was brought to the main square, two monuments of Philip II of Macedon were also erected: a 5-meter tall monument placed on a 3.5-meter base, designed by the same artist who created the Warrior on the Horse, was installed in the Skopje Avtokomanda Municipality, and another monument was erected in June 2012 on the other side of the Stone Bridge, in front of the church St. Dimitrija, an impressive 17 meters tall.

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The main square Magnolija in the southern town of Bitola also received a statue. In 2009 the square was redesigned and rearranged around a central pedestal that was supposed to carry a monument devoted to Philip II of Macedon. However, the 9-meter tall bronze monument devoted to the founder of the town Heraclea, the ancient predecessor of contemporary Bitola, was not mounted until June 2011. Despite the reactions of some of the citizens of Bitola against the uprooting of the trees in the square and the demolition of the park, and against spending a large sum of municipal money in the midst of a severe financial crisis, the mayor of Bitola pushed through the agenda to redesign the square and add the monument of Philip II of Macedon, with his finger pointing at the people who “will symbolize the crossing over of the past and the future in the quest for the ancient roots of Macedonian identity,” as the artist Angel Korunovski mentions in an interview on 7 October 2008. The 200-square-meter space occupied by the monument on the square Magnolija, at the end of Širok Sokak, the main walking street in Bitola, is surrounded by spears and shields resembling the Star of Vergina. All over the country, more archaeological sites have been initiated and more “proof ” of Macedonia’s ancient heritage has been excavated since the start of VMRO-DPMNE’s rule in 2006.

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Religion and clashing ethnonationalisms At the same time as the focus on antiquity and the ongoing name dispute with Greece, the ethnonational tension present in everyday life among people that I described in the previous chapters has been disseminated as an official state policy by the governing—Macedonian and Albanian—ruling political blocks. Arguably, this began when the 2001 military conflict started unexpectedly on 15 February 2001, when the crew of a private TV station in Macedonia revealed a scandalous incident on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo. While attempting to make a report on the border village of Tanuševci, the TV crew encountered a group of armed men who were guarding the border but who were not a part of the regular border patrol or Macedonian army. The TV crew was held hostage for three hours and their footage was destroyed, along with their expensive MiniDV camera. A reporter described the incident in detail, causing shock and disbelief among many people in Macedonia. Who were the armed people guarding the border? Were they terrorists, a local paramilitary formation, part of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or a military formation formed in response to Milošević’s oppressive regime after Kosovo became a UN protectorate? While the Tanuševci incident did not receive much coverage in the weeks that followed, the speculations regarding the identity of the armed people came to an end a month later. During student demonstrations organized by Albanian

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students and professors at the Tetovo University, a paramilitary strike occurred in Tetovo. The widespread assumption in Macedonia was that the demonstrations in Tetovo were orchestrated by the PDP—the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity. The then rector of the Tetovo University, Fadilj Sulejmani, was, unofficially but publicly known, an active member of the PDP. From the hills surrounding Tetovo, armed groups, members of the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA), attacked the police and military forces that guarded the demonstrations. Thus, the day of the demonstrations, 15 March 2001, marked the beginning of the military conflict in Macedonia, which lasted until August 2001. It was obvious that the international community, represented by Javier Solana, the chief commissioner of the EU, and Lord Robertson, the general secretary of NATO, intended to be fully involved in the conflict. However, the close links between Kosovo and the West after the NATO “liberation” of Kosovo was disturbing for the Macedonian leadership and for many people in Macedonia.6 While the West and the international community initially condemned NLA’s violence as a terrorist act, Western rhetoric changed in the months that followed: the “terrorists” became “rebels,” and some aspects of their military struggle became justified. Ethnic Macedonians, especially those in the government, felt coerced, cornered, and denigrated. Although the West took an active leadership role in negotiating the conflict, ethnic Macedonians and the government officially stated that the West was allied with the Albanians. Since events in Kosovo in 1999, when the province received Western military support to force Milošević to withdraw from Kosovo, Macedonians (and Serbs) have viewed the Western presence in the province, represented by KFOR and by NGOs, as confirmation of Western support for the independence of Kosovo. The 2001 military conflict was also viewed by many Macedonians I talked to “as an indicator of the West’s intent to divide Macedonia once again.” Too often contemporary political events were linked with historical interpretations recalling international conferences in London (1912), Bucharest (1913), and the Paris Peace Conference (1919), when the territory of Macedonia was divided between Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Macedonia. I left Kumanovo in January 2001, one week before the Tanuševci incident. The events that took place in the winter and spring of 2001 were shocking. The long phone conversations I had with the people I worked with during my field research in Kumanovo and Skopje confirmed my own feelings—that the war was a shock for everybody, regardless of his or her ethnicity. Given that every day the situation deteriorated, in the course of May and June 2001 some of my Albanian friends sent their family members to stay with relatives in Priština or other places in Kosovo. Many ethnic Macedonians (members of my family too) planned to flee the country, anticipating a long and bloody war. For six months, the whole country experienced a catatonic seizure. The formation of NLA,

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which the media and the politicians speculated consisted of Albanians from Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo, but also foreign citizens—Islamic fighters from other Balkan and Middle Eastern countries—constituted a “new” political actor. Its leader, Ali Ahmeti, demanded changes to the constitution, the legislative system, and the usage of Albanian language. The official end of the military conflict came much sooner than people anticipated. Formally, the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement on 13 August of 2001 put an end to the conflict. At the two-week meeting and negotiations in Ohrid, international mediators demanded that representatives of the four largest political parties—two representing the Macedonian bloc and two the Albanian—had to negotiate, reach an agreement, and implement the decisions within a four-year period. Although the political parties’ representatives signed the agreement, since September 2001 the political and popular rhetoric among Macedonians centered around the fear that Macedonia would disappear.7 In December 2001, according to the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the preamble of the constitution was changed. Instead of stating that Macedonia is the homeland of Macedonians and other ethnicities, the new preamble describes Macedonia as the homeland of the different ethnic groups living in the country. This change triggered ferocious discussions in the parliament, when the Macedonian MPs repeatedly raised the fear that there was a danger of “losing the country.” The first three principles of the Ohrid agreement required: (1) an end to violence; (2) the cessation of hostilities; and (3) the creation of a decentralized government. It soon became clear that implementing the third of these principles would require a new law on local self-government. The key factor that would determine the drafting and implementation of new laws for local self-government would be the size of ethnic groups in Macedonia. As a result, the numbers of people identifying with specific ethnic groups became crucial, and the only way to determine such numbers was through counting people in the upcoming census. The size of ethnic groups also determined how other principles of the Ohrid agreement would be implemented. The agreement established 20 percent as the cut-off point for distinguishing languages entitled to official status at the local, regional, and national levels. Indeed, the sixth principle of the Ohrid agreement concerned official languages directly. It required the state to provide funds for university-level education in those languages that were spoken by at least 20 percent of the population. Although Macedonian is the most widely spoken language in the country, and was declared the official language at independence, the Ohrid agreement required that any other language spoken by at least 20 percent of the population be also designated as an official language of the republic (Dimova 2006; Neofotistos 2012). The official census results, which were published in January 2004, claimed that Albanians comprised 25.2 percent of Macedonia’s population and were

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the most numerous minority. Ethnic Macedonians comprised the majority at 62 percent. This composition allowed implementation of the Ohrid agreement. Soon after, parliament began discussing the new law on self-government. The proposed law, however, created new problems. Ethnic Macedonians in Struga and Skopje staged massive protests against implementation of the new law on decentralization, which used the census results to redraw municipal boundaries. The protesters complained that the new municipal borders were “artificial” and were drawn in such a way that western Macedonia and parts of the north could easily secede from Macedonia to join Kosovo and Albania. Also, ethnic Macedonians living in towns where ethnic Albanians comprised over 20 percent of the population feared that Albanian municipal governments would make them “subordinate,” so that they would be “discriminated against in their own country.” Kumanovo was also deeply affected by the military conflict in 2001 and the events following it. Since the beginning of the fighting in March 2001, the town was one of the main centers of turbulence in Macedonia. The town, with its Macedonian majority and Albanian minority, is situated near the Lipkovo region, which during the conflict served as the command center of the Albanian insurgents, whose headquarters during the six months of fighting were stationed in the medieval monastery near the village of Matejče. The monastery was badly damaged, and the sixteenth-century frescoes were covered with NLA and Albanian National Army (ANA) painted signs, an act that triggered severe anti-Albanian reactions and sentiments across the country. Another deadly incident occurred in the fall of 2002. A bomb exploded in a container next to the Kumanovo high school, exacerbating the already strained ethnonational tensions in the town. Although attended by both Albanian and Macedonian students, the high school students from different ethnicities go to school in different shifts. The bomb was programmed to explode exactly when Macedonian students would have a break and walk by the container, near the food kiosks. Fortunately, the school bell rang five minutes late that day, and only one casual passerby was killed.8 After complaints by the Albanian high school students of a collective poisoning, the high school is now not attended by Albanians at all and is almost entirely made up of Macedonian students, with a few Roma, Serb, and Turkish students as well.9 The poisoning incident was a prelude to a request by Albanians to separate ethnic Albanian high school students from ethnic Macedonian ones. The Albanians argued that, given the fact that the high school is situated in a Macedonian-dominated district, Albanians are physically attacked and tortured by Macedonians. The government’s attempt to solve this problem was to take over a factory located in the Albanian part of Kumanovo and set up a separate Albanian high school.

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In the meantime, elections in September 2002 reversed the standing of the two Macedonian ruling parties: the Social Democrats won 60 seats in the 120-seat parliament, whereas the once ruling VMRO-DPMNE won only 33 seats. In the Albanian political bloc, the “terrorist leader,” Ali Ahmeti, formed a political party that conquered most of the Albanian political seats in the parliament (22). His party also offered the most “reasonable” political solutions for the ethnic problem—implementation of the Ohrid agreement. While, officially, this party confirmed that Macedonia is a unitary republic and that any speculation about its partition or secession is unacceptable, there have been accusations concerning the loyalty of the Albanians to the country and the name. Yet, Ahmeti and his political party remain the main coalition partner since the 2002 elections, playing a critical role in the formation of the subsequent governments.

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Ethnonationalism in “Skopje 2014” Ethnic tensions continue to resurface, and the more serious recent incidents have been centered around the “Skopje 2014” project. The proposition to build a church on the main square sparked negative reactions among Albanian politicians, intellectuals, and regular people, who argued that if there would be a church, the square should accommodate a mosque too. Moreover, many Albanians argued that during Ottoman times, prior to the erection of the church, a mosque existed where the square Macedonia is now. In the same vein, Albanian political representatives demanded additions to their municipal budgets for building monuments of “their” historical figures across Skopje and in the other urban centers in Macedonia, figures who would demonstrate their presence in the past, and their claims to equal participation in the nation-building process of the country. Not surprisingly, archeology has turned into a main vehicle through which contemporary political and ideological claims are voiced and articulated. This has been especially relevant for the Skopsko Kale (Skopje Fortress). More precisely, in 2010–11, the Office for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage has been conducting massive excavations in the Kale complex and intends to build a church-museum on the grounds of a thirteenth-century church unearthed in this location some time ago. Since the Kale complex belongs to the Čair Municipality, a primarily Albanian district, the archaeologists and the wider public were not surprised by the ensuing tensions. More specifically, on 10 February 2011 the news reported that the local, overwhelmingly Albanian population from the area, organized and led by the NGO called Razbudi Se (Wake Up), vandalized the site and destroyed the steel cornerstones of the church-museum because the government did not consider

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their claims for building a mosque within the same complex. Razbudi Se organized protests earlier to contest the archaeological excavations in the fortress, arguing that any excavation on this site has to include Albanian archaeologists who would “prevent fabrications of historical facts” and would guard against deliberate marginalization of Albanians. Its leader, who was employed as an advisor to the Dutch ambassador in Skopje, was suspended after the February 2011 incident, because video records revealed his direct involvement in the destruction of the cornerstones. This incident caused explosive Internet reactions among Macedonians, many of whom stated that they are ready to form a live wall to shield the construction of the church-museum. Representatives from the Ministry of Culture and the Office for Conservation of National Heritage, which has been in charge of most of the archaeological sites and many of the aesthetic transformations in Skopje and Macedonia, especially Pasko Kuzman, remained silent and decided to cease any further construction of the church-museum. The Kale complex, usually one of the most popular sites in Skopje, and used especially during the summer by Skopje citizens and the site of various performances during the Skopje Summer Festival (Skopsko Leto), remained locked and inaccessible throughout the spring and summer of 2011. Media commentators made analogies between the events in Skopsko Kale in 2011 and the events that took place ten years earlier, in 2001 that also started on the Tetovo Kale and then spread onto the Tetovo university. These events a decade ago marked the beginning of the military conflict. The 2011 incident in Skopsko Kale encouraged loud criticism against VMRO-DPMNE’s close connection to the Orthodox Christian church, since, as one of my interlocutor mentioned, the “marriage between the lions [the official symbol of VMRODPMNE] and the church becomes a real obstacle for multi-confessional coexistence in Macedonia.” Indeed, in most of the formal inaugurations of the buildings and monuments built by the government since 2006, there has been the inevitable presence of a priest and the performance of religious rituals of consecration. The project “Skopje 2014” initiated stern criticisms from many intellectuals, politicians, and regular people, regardless of their age, ethnicity, or social background. The most vocal reactions are against the funding of these projects amidst severe economic crisis and official 24 percent unemployment. Architects, especially those who valued the modernistic outlook of Skopje achieved after the earthquake, have criticized the neo-Baroque and neoclassical transformation of central Skopje. The “eclecticism” and “unoriginality” of “Skopje 2014,” especially of the Portal Macedonia, for many only underlines the intentions of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE to create a version of history that deliberately erases the memory of socialism. Branko Crvenkovski, the leader of the oppositional Social Democrat Alliance (SDSM), stated in a statement for the A1 television station that “Skopje 2014” is a “pharaonic, kitschy, crazy and wasteful

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project,” and therefore that the people should decide in a referendum if they want their money to be spent on such a project. “There have never been such kinds of buildings in Skopje and this is an attempt to create a new history.” One of the most vocal critics of the project has been an NGO called Archi-brigade, consisting mainly of architecture students from Skopje who have viewed this project as a defacement of the architectural, urban, and infrastructural spirit of Skopje. The members of this group protested on the main square of Macedonia in 2009 and were beaten up by members of a “counterdemonstration” carrying Orthodox Christian banners. In a TV interview the representative of the Archi-brigade stated,

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We have neolith, authentic antique architecture, byzantine and medieval residential architecture, Ottoman architecture. Whoever wants to see our Macedonian Baroque should visit our churches and monasteries and admire the exquisite icons and fresco paintings—that is our Baroque and not the building of the Ministry of External Affairs. These are the real values that we have and should be proud of. Tourists from all over the world will not visit Skopje to look at caricatures of neoclassicism, Baroque and neo-antiquity built in the 21st century.

Plagiarism, pale mimicry of a missing historical period, spiritual and creative impotence, compensation for something that Skopje never was, a newly composed state that contributes to the anti-Macedonian propaganda from neighbors who claim that “Macedonians don’t know who they are,” are the most common commentaries and reactions from architects, intellectuals, or average citizens with whom I spoke to or who voiced their views in media surveys. One of the most powerful critics of the project is the volume Gradot (The City), edited by Nikola Gelevski, but there has been an impressive opus of scholarly, journalistic and artistic work reacting to the project (Bogdanović 2011; Dimiškovska 2009; Gelevski 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012; Graan 2013; Janev 2011a, 2011b; Vilić 2009; Vulkanski 2011). Those supporting the project, however, claim that Macedonian Barok was the first-established Baroque form, since the style derives directly from antiquity. In a debate organized on the topic “Skopje 2014,” the architect Vangel Božinovski, one of the main architects supporting the recent transformations of Skopje and architect of the House of Mother Teresa, mentions the famous Italian architect Borromini, who was a keen student and a great admirer of the ruins of antiquity. He created his own Baroque style by employing manipulations of classical architectural forms. He discovered that “the Macedonianism, which in Europe is designated as Hellenism, is actually the first established Baroque of all.”10 The joy of the politicians (primarily the Skopje mayor and the Center Municipality authorities) is obvious: they are excited that with this project Skopje

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will become a “real” metropolis, similar to the other metropolitan centers in Europe and the Balkans. At the same debate mentioned above, Danilo Kocevski a writer claimed that the style of the buildings promoted in “Skopje 2014” is not new, but in fact already existed at the beginning of the twentieth century, setting Skopje apart from the Ottoman provincial towns at that time. Moreover, the space where the new buildings are erected (or are planned to be erected) used to have buildings that gave the city a special charm. The church of St. Mina, which the Skopje diocese erected in 1873, was built in a Baroque style, the buildings of the old court of justice, the trade chamber, and the inspectorate, the French-Greek school, the French-Serbian bank, etc. (most of which were destroyed throughout the twentieth century), were all built in a Baroque or neoclassical style. Therefore, the supporters argue, the harsh accusations that Skopje never had a Baroque style are not justified.

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Conclusion In art history, Baroque has been theorized as an alternative to the progressive genealogies of modernity associated with the periods that preceded and followed it, namely, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment (Beverley 1988; Maravall 1986; Newman 2009; Panofsky 1995). The dramatic style of Baroque, used as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control, became associated with excess and abundance of details, which sharply contrasted with the clear and “sober rationality” of the Renaissance (Beverley 1988; Egginton 2010; Lambert 2004). As a dynamic art that reflected the growth of absolutist monarchies, the Baroque style’s primary aim was to manifest power. Also known as “the style of absolutism,” the painters, sculptors, and architects evoked emotion, movement, and variety in their works (Newman 2009). Hence, Baroque favors higher volumes, exaggerated decorations, colossal sculptures, huge furniture, etc., where sense of movement, energy, and tension are dominant impressions, with special attention given to animation and grandeur achieved through scale, and the dramatic use of light and shadow. Situated in its proper historical time, Baroque appeared as an aesthetic response by the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation in the late sixteenth century. The Catholic Church viewed the arts as a vehicle to communicate religious themes directly and emotionally by using the juxtaposition of concave and convex forms, curved forms, circular enclosures, and the use of false perspective (Gardner, Kleiner, and Mamiya 2005). More precisely, when it launched the Counter-Reformation in 1600s, the Catholic Church used art in its campaign. Art was intended to be both doctrinally “correct” and visually and emotionally appealing so that it could influence the largest possible audience (Beverley 1988; Lambert 2004).

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I find the concept of Baroque analytically critical for understanding the ongoing intricacies of the project Skopje 2014. I concur with and draw on the works that this project as a manifestation of neoliberal governmentality where tourism and incorporation of the national brand are central (Graan 2013), or where art is analyzed as an expression of cultural sovereignty and governance (De Cesari 2010a; De Cesari 2010b; Mazzarella 2004; Oguibe 2004; Turner 2002; Winegar 2006; Yudice 2003). Yet, I would like to emphasize that aesthetics and the politics surrounding it, as Rancière (2005) reminds us, carry an important transcendental element. I wonder if we cannot see many similarities between the Baroque history and the changes occurring in Skopje and all over Macedonia since the political changes and the implementation of the “revival” in 2006. As it was with the Catholic Church several centuries ago, in contemporary Macedonia the governing power also needs to interpellate as many subjects as possible and, in order to have a successful campaign, it needs to offer an aesthetically and emotionally pleasing and moving experience. As I have argued, in the politics of the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century, the Macedonian nation-building project has been carried out by using signifiers such as Barok furniture, projects such as “Skopje 2014” that aim to engineer “suitable” subjects by reconstructing the central cityscape, and new buildings that are reminiscent of “the past that existed prior to socialism,” as an employee at the Ministry of Culture in Skopje observed. Arguably, the Barok style was partly introduced to be appealing to the masses and to glorify the current rule of the governing party by adopting a new rhetorical, theatrical, and sculptural fashion, expressive of the “triumph” of the state (and the church as well). But it is also an attempt to insert a variety of aesthetic and historical styles that would link Macedonia to the West. An employee in the Ministry of Culture affirmed that “Barok is Europe. The Renaissance was antiquitization of Europe in the 15th century, and Barok is a logical outcome after the 500 years of Ottoman rule over Macedonia”. The Barok style is an inseparable part of the national “revival” enterprise, founded on the processes of antiquitization (antikvizacija) and Christianization (hristijanizacija) of the country. Propelled by the conflict with Greece over the name Macedonia, and the 2001 conflict with the Albanian insurgents, the revival project deserves a closer political and symbolic scrutiny, for Barok reveals the radical aestheticization of contemporary politics in Macedonia. Moving into Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, this chapter revealed the wider context of the activities of the state, particularly in the context of its transnational relations, and in its attempts to use architecture and monuments to assert a certain kind of truth about the country, as well as its right to exist in a particular form. I argued that the creation and defining of the idea of Macedonia has been conducted to a great extent in relation to the challenges against

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the name “Macedonia” by Greece, and the way that transnational organizations such as the EU and NATO have responded and attempted to mediate the dispute. This contextual intervention is one of the central points of this analysis— that places do not define themselves alone, but are always defined in relation to other places. Given the outspoken commotion the Greek government made about its neighbor’s choice of name, the evidence of the recent nationalistic project is a particularly explicit one. This chapter portrays the excessive, glittering, and oversized ornamentation that symbolically, but also literally, pretends to be a great deal larger than life. While I mentioned the enormous cost of the “Skopje 2014” project, I cannot provide a definite answer on how the government managed to pay for it, let alone what the consequences have been (or will be) for citizens of the country, or whether, as some have suggested, that it actually had a good effect on the economy, given that so many people must have been employed to work on the project. What I can state with certainty is that the political disputes discussed above have played a key role in the process of rebranding the country—a process in which aesthetics have been critical not only as tools for creating new symbols, signs, and content required during rebranding, but also as the very terrain where the rebranding takes place. In this aspect I build on Rancière’s (2005) argument that politics, as a struggle of an unrecognized party for equal recognition in the established order, relies fully on aesthetics, because this struggle takes place over the image of society—over what it is permissible to say or to show. By coining the term “the ethical regime of art,” Rancière alludes to the relevance of artistic images for the utility of the society. Faced with strong international pressure to make compromises and find a solution to the name dispute with Greece, and also experiencing forceful international scrutiny regarding the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement on minority rights, the state has utilized artistic images in a similar vein to Rancière’s ethical regimes of art. This international pressure has bluntly revealed Macedonia’s place on the international stage. In her seminal essay “Citizens of Humanity: Internationalism and the Imagined Community of Nations,” Liisa Malkki (1994) shows how important it is to critically examine the hierarchy of nations along with the underlying ideology of the idea of internationalism: One way of studying the naturalization of nationness is to pursue the international since the main force of all the competing nationalisms of the modern era lies in a fundamental vision of global order itself, a vision of the international. Both the national and the international are transnational cultural forms, and both are aspects of an overarching “national order of things.” (ibid.: 42)

The regime of internationalism is a project that at once produces homogenization and celebration of the differences among nations—a double move that

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further promotes figurations such as the “family of nations” while enabling the worst forms of nationalism, hierarchy among Western and non-Western nations, and the hegemonic prevalence of Western models of governance. “Indeed, the idealized, ritualized internationalism celebrates a seemingly egalitarian brotherhood or sisterhood of nations … but one can hardly miss the continual metaphoric slide from harmonious egalitarianism to steeply hierarchical family and gender metaphors” (ibid.: 51).11 In such an international order of things, the name dispute and the reaction by the international community has made the task of defending the name Macedonia a primary objective.

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Notes 1. The video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybmt-iLysU (accessed on 7 August 2011). 2. The party conflicts that emerged among the VMRO-DPMNE members after 2002 were centered around several prominent politicians from the party: the late president Boris Trajkovski, and Ljupčo Georgievski, who left the old VMRO-DPMNE and formed a new party called VMRO-Narodna (VMRO-People’s). 3. For more on the “image” and politics in Macedonia see Graan (2010). 4. The constant deterioration of the archaeological museum complex, situated in the old town and built in 1976, culminated in April 2011 when the basement was flooded and endangered valuable artifacts. In an editorial from 4 April 2011 published in the daily newspaper Dnevnik, the journalist Vesna Ilievska reveals that the museum, built over underground waters, had flooded regularly in the past thirty-five years. Only a thirtycentimeter cement wall protects the depots with the museum exhibits from the water. She questions the reasons for building new museums near the river Vardar, when the state is unable to maintain the existing museum and protect its artifacts. 5. The only bidder for this construction announced by the Ministry of Transportation and Connections was a Greek businessman, who purchased the lot, 6,370 square meters, for 100 euro per square meter. The conditions of the contract were that the style of the hotel has to be in a style similar to the rest of the area (i.e., Baroque or classical), and that the hotel should be part of a chain that has a minimum of 250 hotels throughout the world. The buyer had already arranged that this would be a Marriott Hotel and that the investment would cost between 30 and 50 million euros. The contract also stated that permits for the construction should be obtained within a year after the purchase, and the hotel should be finished no more than six years afterward, or an interest penalty of 2 percent of the total price of the plot per month would be charged. If the hotel is not completed by the end of the six years, the government will renounce the bid and the signed contract. 6. For more detailed account of the 2001 conflict in Macedonia see Neofotistos (2012). 7. The Ohrid Framework Agreement served as the basis for amendments to the constitution, which in turn affected the legislative system, employment policies, and usage of Albanian language. 8. The school worker who was responsible for ringing the bell stated on national TV that, due to a conversation with her colleague, she lost sense of time and failed to ring the bell at the right moment, saving the lives of many high school students.

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9. A large number of Albanian students were hospitalized, but the doctors in Macedonia could not identify any “infectious disease that attacks only Albanians,” as a doctor from the Kumanovo hospital noted. Media reported that representatives of the World Health Organization visited Kumanovo in August 2002, but could not discover anything. Ethnic Macedonians speculated that no one was poisoned and argued that Albanians had staged this incident to attract Western attention. 10. Furthermore, Božinovski claims that at the crux of the traditional Macedonian architecture lies a deeply rooted Baroque style. He illustrated this statement by comparing the square in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican to the square in the ancient city of Dzaras, built by Macedonian architects during the invasion of Alexander the Great in the fourth century . Moreover, Božinovski stated that the first sketch for a Baroque square in Skopje was made in 1914 by the Serbian architect Dimitrie Leko. The subsequent architects who worked in Skopje, remained faithful to this Baroque foundation for the central square of the city. 11. Malkki also observes that the relations of difference between nations seemingly are made equivalent, equidistant, and thus domesticated, normalized and emptied of historical and political content. The result of such emptying is that relationships between countries like Belgium and Burundi, say, or the United States and the Dominican Republic are represented not as continuing neo-colonial relations conceived in radical political inequality, but as relations between separate, equal entities of the same type—such that the differences between these nationalities appear homologous with quaint taxonomic differences between their national flags and costumes. (1994: 59)

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———. 2008. “Fixing National Subjects in the 1920s Southern Balkans: Also an International Practice.” American Ethnologist 35:1–20. De Cesari, Chiara. 2010a. "Creative Heritage: Palestinian Heritage NGOs and Defiant Arts of Government." American Anthropologist 112(4):625–637. ———. 2010b. "World Heritage and mosaic universalism. A view from Palestine." Journal of Social Archaeology 10:299–324. Dimiškovska, Ljubica Grozdanovska. 2009. "Skopskite spomenici se plagijat na poznati skulpturi od svetskite ploštadi!" Fokus 724:22–25. Dimova, Rozita. 1999. “The Affirmation of the Macedonian Nation: The Role of Identity Theories and Symbols.” Indiana Slavic Series 10:39–56. ———. 2006. “Rights and Size: Ethnic Minorities, Nation-states and International Community in the Balkans.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 130:277–99. Dyker, David, and Vejvoda, Ivan. 1996. Yugoslavia and After: A Study in Fragmentation, Despair and Rebirth. London: Longman. Egginton, William. 2010. The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Friedman, Victor. 1975. “Macedonian Language and Nationalism during the Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century.” Balkanistica 2:83–98. ———. 1986. “Linguistics, Nationalism and Literary Languages.” In The Real World Linguist: Linguistic Applications in the 1980s, ed. Peter Bjarkman and Victor Raskin, 287–305. ———. 1989. “Macedonian: Codification and Lexicon.” In Language Reform, ed. Istvan Fodor and Claude Hagge, 299–334. Hamburg, Germany: Helmut Buske. ———. 1993. “ Language Policy and Language Behavior in Macedonia: Background and Current Events.” In Language Contact, Language Conflict, ed. Eran Fraenkel and Christina Kramer, 73–99. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 1997. “Observing the Observers: Language, Ethnicity, and Power in the 1994 Macedonian Census and Beyond.” New Balkan Politics 1:1–18. ———. 1998. “The Implementation of Standard Macedonian: Problems and Results.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 131:31–57. ———. 1999. “On the Complexity of Identity in the Nineteenth Century Balkans as Reflected in a Multilingual Text.” Vpoiskah “balkanskogo” na Balkanah 5:48–51. Gardner, Helen, Fred S. Kleiner, and Christin J. Mamiya. 2005. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth. Gelevski, Nikola. 2010a. “Kradat Grad: Zbornik tekstovi za proektot ‘Skopje 2014.’”. Skopje: Templum. ———. 2010b. “Nered i Groteska: Razgovori i satiri za proektot ‘Skopje 2014.’” Skopje: Templum. ———. 2011. Arhitektura i Globalizacija: Tekstovi za gradot. Skopje: Templum. ———, ed. 2012. Fasadata Gi Jade Temelite. Skopje: Templum. Graan, Andrew. 2010. “On the Politics of Imid: European Integration and the Trials of Recognition in Post-Conflict Macedonia.” Slavic Review 69:835–58. ———. 2013 “Counterfeiting the Nation?: Skopje 2014 and the Politics of Nation Branding in Macedonia.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (1):161–179. Grandits, Hannes. 2008. “Dynamics of Socialist Nation-Building: The Short Lived Programme of Promoting a Yugoslav National Identity and Some Comparative Perspectives.” Dve domovini/Two Homelands 28:15–28.

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Green, Sarah F. 2005. Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Herzfeld, Michael. 1982. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. Austin: University of Texas Press. ———. 2008. “Archaeological Etymologies: Monumentality and Domesticity in TwentiethCentury Greece.” In A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in twentiethcentury Greece, ed. Dimitris Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos, 43–54. Athens: Mouseio Benaki. Janev, Goran. 2011a. “Ethnocratic Remaking of Public Space—Skopje 2014.” EFLA Journal: Political Implications of the Urban Landscape 1:33–36. ———. 2011b. “Narrating the Nation, Narrating the City.” Cultural Analysis 10:3–21. Karakasidou, Anastasia N. 1997. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kostopoulos, Tasos. 2003. “Counting the ‘Other’: Official Census and Classified Statistics in Greece (1830–2001).” In Minorities in Greece—Historical Issues and New Perspectives, ed. Sevasti Trubeta and Christian Voß, 55–78. Munich: Slavica Verlag. Lambert, Gregg. 2004. The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture. London: Continuum. Lampe, John R. 2000. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malkki, Liisa. 1994. “Citizens of Humanity: Internationalism and the Imagined Community of Nations.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 3:41–68. Maravall, Jose Antonio. 1986. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mazzarella, William. 2004. "Culture, Globalization, Mediation." Annual Review of Anthropology 33:345–367. Mazower, Mark. 2000. The Balkans. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Neofotistos, Vasiliki. 2012. The Risk of War: Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. Newman, Jane. 2009. “Periodization, Modernity, Nation: Benjamin between Renaissance and Baroque “ Journal of the Northern Renaissance 1:19–34. Oguibe, Olu. 2004. The Culture Game. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Panofsky, Erwin. 1995. What Is Baroque? Three Essays on Style. Boston: MIT Press. Ramet, Sabrina. 2005. Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2005. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Continuum. Rodrigue, Aron. 1995. “Difference and Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire.” Interview by Nancy Reynolds. Stanford Humanities Review 5: 81–92. Rossos, Andrew. 2008. Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History. Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institute Press. Rusinow, Dennison. 1977. The Yugoslav Experiment, 1948–1974. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sharp, Alan. 1997. “The Genie That Would Not Go Back Into the Bottle: National Selfdetermination and the Legacy of the First World War and the Peace Settlement.” In Europe and Ethnicity: World War I and Contemporary Ethnic Conflict, ed. Seamus Dunn and T. G. Fraser. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Shoup, Paul. 1968. Communism and the Yugoslav National Question. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Trubeta, Sevasti. 2003. “Minorisation and ‘Ethnicisation’ in Greek Society: Comparative Perspectives on Muslim Immigrants and the Thracian Muslim Minority.” In Minorities in Greece—Historical Issues and New Perspectives, ed. Sevasti Trubeta and C. Voß. 95–112. Munich: Slavica Verlag. Turner, Stephen. 2002. "Sovereignty, Or the Art of Being Native." Cultural Critique 51: 74–100. Vilić, Nebojša. 2009. Siluvajte go Skopje. Skopje: 359 Degrees. Voß, Christian. 2001. “Sprach- und Geschichtsrevision in Makedonien: Zur Dekonstruktion von Blaže Koneski.” Osteuropa 51:953–67. ———. 2002. “Das Motiv der Wiedergeburt in der Großregion Makedonien.” Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 38:91–111. ———. 2003. “The Situation of the Slavic-Speaking Minority in Greek Macedonia—Ethnic Revival, Cross-Border Cohesion, or Language Death?” In Minorities in Greece— Historical Issues and New Perspectives, ed. Sevasti Trubeta and Christian Voß, 173–87. Munich: Slavica Verlag. ———. 2008. “Great Macedonia as a ‘Mental Map’ in the 20th and 21st Century.” In Terytorializm a tożsamość, vol. 31, ed. Jolanta Sujecka, 163–69. Poznań, Poland: Warschau. ———. 2009. “The Macedonian Standard Language: A Tito-Yugoslav Experiment or Symbol for ‘Great Macedonian’ Ethnic Inclusion?” In Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe, ed. Clare-Mar Molinero and Patricktevenson, 118–32. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. VMRO-DPMNE. n.d. “Doctrine.” http://vmrodpmne.org.mk/images/pdf/doktrina.pdf (accessed on 7 July 2009). Vulkanski, Pandalf. 2011. Skopski Prikazni od 2014. Skopje: Templum. Winegar, Jessica. 2006. "Cultural Sovereignty in a Global Art Economy: Egyptian Cultural Policy and the New Western Interest in Art from the Middle East." Cultural Anthropology 21:173–204. Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Yudice, George. 2003. The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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I

n his book The Theater of Truth, Egginton (2010) argues that the principal theoretical value of the term “Baroque” derives from its relation as an aesthetic category to the historical period of modernity. While the historical Baroque relies on proliferation of décor and a conscious embrace of artifice, it also reveals an organizing logic that goes beyond that specific age (the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries). This organizing logic is a theatrical one, where the space of representation is severed into a “screen of appearances,” and the truth is presumed to reside behind it. It is this basic premise, divided between appearances and truths, that underlies the multiple strategies that Baroque aesthetic production puts into play even now. Egginton insists that rather than a return to the stylistic practices of a particular time and place, the neo-Baroque should be described as the continuation of a cultural strategy to be deployed in the cultural politics of the present and issues of neo-Baroque aesthetics (ibid.). Indeed, what is at stake here is not only the Baroque as a “style-concept,” but also its articulation as a cultural signifier.1 Beverly argues that this cultural signifier actually stamped the long history of ideological class conflict that accompanied the transition from feudalism to capitalism, where the capital city became the central institutional and ideological form. Urban rise all over “Europe as a market center and national or regional corporate seigneur involved a massive shift of human and material resources in favor of urban concentrations, a conquest over the countryside. … Baroque thus situates itself outside the rising bourgeois value system of money and market exchange as determinants of power and status” (1988: 32–33). Regardless whether we interpret the current Baroque expansion in Macedonia as a mimetic occurrence of the governing elites to convey their sense of power through the same mechanisms used in the Baroque epoch proper, or as an expression of neoliberal governmentality with touristic and corporate features, or as “constant of culture” and timeless phenomenon recurring throughout history, the ongoing Baroque venture blends together aesthetics and politics in a cognizant and excessive manner. Is it not precisely this derogatory meaning

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of “Baroque,” deriving from its excessive ornamentation or complexity of line, that made it into a generic style not necessarily associated with the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries? This is exactly the explanation of the furniture producer and owner of the Barok factory in Struga. The size, the conspicuous ornamentation, and the curved forms were given as the main reasons that have attracted consumers from different backgrounds to this style. Similarly, when I asked people in Kumanovo who purchased furniture from the Barok line what they liked about the style, it was the impression of wealth suggested by the size and the form of the furniture. The monuments and the ornamentation on old or new buildings in the public spaces throughout Skopje similarly pinpoint the sublime effect triggered by the Baroque mechanism on the observer. In a recently published book on Skopje, Mijalkovik and Urbanek (2011) argue that the city of Skopje, with its multilayered and diverse history, has not become an urban and architectural entity. The plan developed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange after the 1963 earthquake did not manage to erase the preexisting divisions, in which the river Vardar has served as a natural and historical border dividing Skopje along ethnic lines. His vision of an urban nucleus aligned with public buildings along the river Vardar, and accessible to every citizen, was only partially accomplished during socialism, turning it into a buffer zone of the divided city, a zone that belongs to everyone and no one at the same time. Instead of becoming a living space of exchange, the division of Skopje multiplied along the river Vardar, creating a fragmented space with multiple functions: illegal, informal, abandoned, accepted. The new major remodeling of Skopje and the ongoing urbanistic planning (which is also the first comprehensive planning since the 1960s), also, fails to correct the omissions of the past, led primarily by the idea to create an identity relying on a range of modernist myths that go back to antiquity but step over (or erase) the presence of the Ottoman period. The intention to create and affirm identity and thus complete (or participate) in the process of Europeanization might deepen rather than diminish the division of the city. Although the main incentive of the current reconstructions seems to be historical, the contemporary architectural changes in Skopje place commercialism at center stage. Commercialism becomes an inextricable link between aesthetic processes in private and public spaces described in this book (ibid.). An equally important link—that between corporate identity and objectified culture—analyzed by John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff allows us to rethink the concepts of ethnic groups, nation-states, and political economy in the contemporary world, where “consumer nationalism” and “brands” creep “into the most universal of human qualities: life itself ” (2009: 5; Graan 2013).2 The amalgamation of branding, marketing, identity, and culture has led to a cultural commodification and incorporation of identity that blurs boundaries

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between consumer and producer, performer and audience (ibid.: 26).3 Identity is increasingly claimed as property managed by palpably corporate means with an intention to brand it and sell it (ibid.: 29). The efforts, however, to render identity and its products into private property keep running into a slippage between—and the inseparability of—essence and artifact, genetic endowment and personal creativity (ibid.: 37). Here I want to bring back the relevance of Egginton’s (2010) neo-Baroque thesis and the theater of truth, which, as I argued earlier, uses as its stage the distinction between excessive appearance and truth that resides behind the form. The corporate trends in identity provide precisely the stage for this neo-Baroque theater in which aesthetics play a crucial role in framing and staging the binaries between the local and the global, the universal and the particular, the cosmopolitan and the exotic, the rational and the affective (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009: 123). Neo-Baroque aesthetics are central in the process of incorporating nationality, a process that occurs on a much larger scale than the incorporation of ethnicity. While liberal democratic states and civic authorities have long viewed themselves as corporations in a more general sense, the current tendency is to make nationality an object of ownership that belongs to the millions of people who share an emotional identification with it. Moreover, nationality also “becomes a commodity that would engage in commercial encounters with tourists where the national brand becomes a multivalent sign, always in construction, always immanently and imminently corporate” (ibid.: 125). Nationality Inc., according to Comaroff and Comaroff, draws on where governments deploy the national brands to maximum effect, by acting as an incorporated vendor, by commodifying the essence of the imagined community, by treating the subjects and members of this community as stakeholders in the corporate nation. This is a complex process in which affects, interests, and ethics are involved in the production of the singular self or collective selves, a process that relies on internal heterodoxy by subsuming it within a superordinate oneness (ibid.: 131). The case of Macedonia resonates with Comaroff and Comaroff ’s theoretical discussion but also becomes a precedent in which the brand itself becomes an object of dispute between two countries. The cases discussed by Comaroff and Comaroff (Argentina, South Africa, or the UK) are involved in the production of national brands. But what is at stake when the national brand is denied and the condition to change it becomes a prerequisite for joining the processes of international integration (EU, NATO) as well as a condition for economic prosperity (i.e., more investments)? As I argued in chapter 5, this denial has generated a whole new material outlook of public spaces in Skopje and elsewhere in the country. It has allowed, even encouraged, an emergence of a perfect stage for the neo-Baroque aesthetic forms to create a new (articulated as old) visual language that confirms existence. In effect, the name dispute is

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a vivid example of a copyright dispute in which Greece’s claim is that it has a natural “copyright” or entitlement to control and to “profit” from circulation, duplication, and sale of the antiquity period and everything connected to ancient Macedonia. If taken into the realm of the philosophy of naming, and the arguments that names create identity, name becomes the sole carrier of identity. One of the central aspects of Hegel’s philosophy was the relationship between naming and identity (Hegel 1994). Naming is central to questions of identity and his phenomenological idea was that the word is a death, a murder of a thing: as soon as the reality is symbolized, caught in a symbolic network, the thing itself is more present in a word, in its concept, than in its immediate physical reality. More precisely, as Žižek reminds us, we cannot return to the immediate reality: even if we turn from the word to the thing—from the word “‘table’ to the table in its physical reality, for example—the appearance of the table itself is already marked with a certain lack—to know what a table really is, what it means, we must have a recourse to the word which implies an absence of the thing” (1989: 131). In an entertaining and yet philosophically enlightening discussion, Žižek examines the most prominent approaches to the problem of naming, descriptivism and antidescriptivism (ibid.). The central question that they try to address is how names refer to the objects they denote. The descriptivist viewpoint stresses the domain of meaning—a name refers to an object because of its meaning, because of a cluster of descriptive features that subsequently refer to objects in reality insofar as they possess properties designated by the cluster of descriptions. The antidescriptivist answer, in contrast, is that a word is connected to an object or a set of objects through an act of “primal baptism” (ibid.: 134). Žižek further emphasizes that the two approaches miss the same crucial point—the radical contingency of naming, the seemingly tautological feature: “the dogmatic stupidity proper to a signifier as such, the stupidity which assumes the shape of tautology: a name refers to an object because the object is called that—this impersonal form announces the dimension of the big Other beyond other subjects” (ibid.: 132). The basic problem of descriptivism thus is to determine what constitutes the identity of the designated object beyond the ever-changing cluster of descriptive features. And this is, according to Žižek, the retroactive effect of naming itself: it is the name itself, the signifier, that supports the identity of the object. Naming itself retroactively constitutes its reference. Naming is necessary but it becomes necessary afterward, retroactively, once we are already “in it.” This philosophical aspect of naming is helpful in understanding the force that the denial of the name has for many people in Macedonia and abroad. Ricoeur (1992) reminds us that the nonidentifiable becomes the unnamable. A person is identified through names: “to be a person is, amongst other things, to have a name” (Harre 1998: 65). Naming assigns “words of identity” that form part of the appearance of self (Stone 1962). Language in general, and

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names in particular, become central in fixing identity and marking its changes. In the definition of the self, the other is implicitly identified, just as defining the other implicitly characterizes the self. Ricoeur notes that “the Other is not only the counterpart of the Same but belongs to the intimate constitution of its sense” (1992: 45). Hence, as Foucault has argued, the most authoritative systems of classification are those that are taken as natural rather than constructed precisely when “the Other is incorporated into the natural order of disorder” (1971: 44). Boundaries and limits are most effective when taken for granted and sensed rather than specified. Names create the self, but they also locate the Other in terms of a wider or a narrower scope of belonging (ibid.: 44). Furthermore, Bourdieu contends that the sense of limits implies forgetting the limits (1985). Hence, the power of naming and the power to name is a key feature in understanding power relations. Naming is itself a form of power, since the named is bounded. A name may be a prerequisite not only for social position but also for social action and political solidarity. Bourdieu points out the power to impose another’s identity upon someone else, as well as the power to deny names for oneself or others. According to Bourdieu, the cruelest combination of all is to be confined and silenced—bound and gagged (ibid.: 477). Hence, modern mastery of power is the power to divide, classify, and allocate. This explains the proliferation of specialists in identification, along with a growth of the currency of brands and names. Experts carry a special responsibility for characterizing reality (persons, concepts, etc.) in terms of key attributes. Through this specification they furnish “an analytical, visible and permanent reality, then develop complex categories and sub-categories of the other, which carry the modernist hope of combining the objectivity of science with an evaluation of ourselves as paragons of normality, health and progress” (Foucault 1979: 44). “Objective” categorization thus confirms the superiority of the expert over that which is classified and indeed authenticates the identity of expert in and through classification. Complex categorization provides its own legitimacy, because “it is the mere existence of multiple categories that guarantees the legitimacy of the classifying process” (Sedgwick 1991: 251). These arguments on the link between naming, power, and the sense of self shed an important light on the naming dispute between Greece and Macedonia, albeit from a different angle. If, as I mentioned earlier, naming assigns “words of identity” that, in effect, inform part of the appearance of self, a denial of one’s name, or the request to change one’s name, strikes directly at the notion of self, and the sense of survival and perseverance. The ensuing process to create a “solid” brand named Macedonia coupled with the ideology of nationalism resonating with the rhetoric that “without the name Macedonia we will disappear,” in addition to drawing its power from the philosophical mechanism embedded in the name itself, can be located in the universal semiotic corollary

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of nation-brands fixated and condensed in a name, a territory, and a particular “essence.” And yet, brands, as complex media objects, are produced through contested metapragmatic domains. In these domains different professional and political interests and discourses of designers, lawyers, marketers, consumers, activists, politicians, and others are invested, enabling brands to acquire a status of quasi-commodities and objects. They are not in themselves utilitarian objects but also refer to experiences, temporal sequences, places, or countries. It can be successfully argued that the semiotic language of brands has undergone a curious form of genericide in which brand is often coextensive with semiosis. More precisely, by circulating as metasymbols, brands appear as detached from their material base (Coombe 1996, 1997; Manning and Uplisashvili 2007). I hope my previous discussion sheds light on the salient materiality involved in the process of reclaiming the brand of Macedonia and rebranding the meaning of this signifier to include antiquity and Christianity through massive construction projects. The material rebranding of Macedonia has had high financial costs for its citizens. Vocal critics of the government’s aesthetic revival have argued that profit making and money laundering are the main objectives of the massive constructions and reconstructions throughout Macedonia. Beverly has argued that in Baroque representation wealth and power appear as “uncoerced reflexes of some providence built into nature, rather than as determinate products of human labor carried out under exploitative—and, in the case of the colonies, genocidal—relations of production. That is part of the Baroque’s service as an ideological practice of a Catholic ruling class to impose exploitation and control” (1988: 30). In other words, the rise of capital and profit has always been embedded in the Baroque. The contemporary nationality and ethnicity brands that I’ve discussed earlier, linked to a voracious intellectual property regime, are inextricably linked to the contemporary history of capital and are predicated on divisions between First, Second, and Third World countries, where the nationbrands hold different values and occupy different hierarchies. And yet, it is this circulation of capital that has also opened up new means of claiming recognition, of economic emancipation, and of renegotiating majority/minority divisions. As argued earlier, the domestic spaces opened up more possibilities for subversion, for contesting the rigid class, ethnic, and gender identities imposed on people. Instead of questioning the simple binary between private and public spaces as one of the necessary conditions of the Baroque theater of truth, I have showed that on the center stage of this theater is the notion of aesthetics: aesthetics of public spaces, which match, contradict, and are constituted by and through the aesthetics of domestic spaces, where houses and furniture open up a possibility for social change. By bringing aesthetics into the materiality of domestic and public spaces I have demonstrated the forceful

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potential of aesthetic experiences to shape our visions, thoughts, political endeavors, and even our sense of self in both a distantly historical manifestation and a very contemporary one.

Notes

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1. D’Ors, for instance, describes Baroque as a form that has reemerged “promiscuously” throughout cultural history, appearing as the “‘Barocchus macedonius’ and the ‘Barocchus romanus,’ the ‘Barocchus buddhicus’ and the ‘Barocchus tridentius, sive romanus, sive jesuiticus’ in turn” (d’Ors, quoted Newman 2009: 24). According to d’Ors’s chart, there have been no fewer than twenty “species” of the Baroque since the “prehistoric” “Barocchus pristinus” “among the savages,” and Baroque was thus less a specific period than a “constant of culture” adamantly liberated from a particular sequence and place (ibid.: 25). 2. I would like to draw attention to Verdery’s valuable discussion on “nation as potent symbol” (1996); Verdery argues that “nation is an operator for social classification and an aspect of the political and symbolic/ideological order that acquires different meanings over history and always serves as a sorting device” (ibid.: 38). She suggests that the criterion deployed in the “sorting” has varied across time and space; this suggestion elucidates shifts that have occurred in the definitions/understandings of the Macedonian nation. Moreover, in modern times, nation is a potent symbol and the basis of classification within an international system of nation-states. The nation is a construct crucial to assigning subject positions in the modern state and in the international order (ibid.). 3. The authors make a clear distinction between culture in an anthropological sense and this one, which is “in the guise claimed by those who would assert collective subjectivity by objectifying it for the market” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009: 18).

References Beverley, John. 1988. “Going Baroque?” Boundary 2 (15–16): 27–39. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups. Theory and Society 14: 723–744. Comaroff, John, and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coombe, Rosemary. 1996. “Embodied Trademarks: Mimesis and Alterity on American Commercial Frontiers.” Cultural Anthropology 11 (May): 202–24. ———. 1997. “The Demonic Place of ‘Not There’: Trademark Rumors in the Postindustrial Imaginary.” In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil. Gupta and James Ferguson, 249–276. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Egginton, William. 2010. The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1971. History of Sexuality. Berkeley: University of California. ———. 1979. “On governmentality.” Ideology & Consciousness, 6: 5–21.

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Graan, Andrew. 2013. “Counterfeiting the Nation?: Skopje 2014 and the Politics of Nation Branding in Macedonia.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (1):161–79. Harre, Rom. 1998. The Singular Self. London: Sage. Hegel, Georg. [1807] 1994. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press Manning, Paul, and Anna Uplisashvili. 2007. “‘Our Beer’: Ethnographic Brands in Postsocialist Georgia.” American Anthropologist 109:626–41. Mijalkovik, Milan, and Katarina Urbanek. 2011. Skopje: Svetskoto kopile. Arhitektura na podeleniot grad. Skopje: Goten. Newman, Jane O. 2009. “Periodization, Modernity, Nation: Benjamin between Renaissance and Baroque.” Journal of the Northern Renaissance 1:19–34. Ricoeur, Paul.1992. Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1991. Epistemology of the Closet. Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Stone, Gregory. 1962. “Appearence and the self.” In. Human Behaviour and Social Processes, ed. Arnold Rose, 86–118. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Verdery, Katherine. 1996. “Wither ‘Nation and Nationalism’?” In Mapping the Nation, ed. Gopal Balkarishan. London: Verso. Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

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Index

Aarbakke, Vemund, 126, 127 affect, 50 Africa. See Egypt, South Africa aesthetics, vii, 2–4, 9, 12, 15, 39, 110, 116, 137–38, 144, 146, 149 agency, 2, 3, 5, 6, 51, 68; agent, 5, 6, 85 Ahmeti, Ali, 131, 133 ajvar, 54 Alaska, 42 Albania, 13–15, 17n10–11, 21, 23–24, 32–33, 35–38, 41–42, 44n7, 45n13– 14, 76, 79, 89n3–4, 97–98, 125, 129, 131–32. See also Albanians, army, culture, diaspora, elite, emigration, ethnicity, flag, history, household, language, men, migrants, minority, Muslim, nationalism, party, poor, relations, rich, society, tradition, wealth, women Albanian National Army (ANA), 132. See also army Albanians, 4–5, 8–10, 13–14, 16n5, 17n10, 20–27, 31–44, 44n1–5, 45n10, 45n13–46n15, 50–52, 57–63, 66–69, 70n4, 72–77, 79–88, 89n5, 92–97, 103–12, 115–16, 129–34, 137, 140n9; ethnic, vii, 3, 5, 9, 13, 14, 20, 22, 25–27, 29–31, 34, 36, 39–41, 43, 57, 61, 63, 66–69, 72–75, 78–80, 85–86, 88, 108, 132. See also Albania, ethnicity, Kosovo, men, Šiptar, women Albanian Women’s Alliance, 80. See also gender, NGO, women Alexander the Great, 122, 127, 128, 140n10. See also Philip II of Macedon, Star of Vergina, Warrior on the Horse

America, 7, 12, 13, 42; Central, 21; South, 21. See also Argentina, Canada, Caribbean, United States of America Amnesty International, 41, 75. See also NGO ANA. See Albanian National Army Anderson, Benedict, 73 Andriotis, Nikolaos, 126 Andrusz, Gregory, 105 antagonisms, 12; antagonistic, 44n3, 115 anthropology, 3, 5, 16n3, 16n4, 127, 150n3 antifascist, 27; Assembly of Macedonia (ASNOM), 32 antiquitization, 115, 116, 128, 137. See also antiquity, Greece, name dispute antiquity, 2, 121, 124, 128, 129, 135, 145, 147, 149; neo-antiquity, 135 Antonov, Vladimir, 100–101 anxiety, 21, 55. See also danger, fear, psychoanalysis, threat archaeology, 5; archaeological, 6, 129, 134; Archaeological Museum, 117, 139n4; archaeologists, 6, 133–34; of the past, 6 Archi-brigade, xi, 135 architecture, 2, 107, 111, 135, 137, 140n10; of Kumanovo, 94, 100; Ottoman, 101, 103, 110, 113n6, 135. See also building, construction Argentina, 146. See also America Arifi, Teuta, 89n4 army: ancient Macedonian, 123; guerrilla, 42; of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 22; Macedonian, 129; National Liberation, 130, 132; Yugoslav (National), 37, 105. See also Albanian National Army, Kosovo Liberation Army, NATO

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Aromanians, 97. See also Vlachs art, 106, 125, 136–37, 138 Arthur, James, 73 artifacts, 5, 139n4, 146. See also commodities, goods, products, things Artisien, Patrick, 36 ASNOM. See antifascist Australia, 28 Austria, 22, 30, 32, 55, 65. See also Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, 25, 39 AWA. See Albanian Women’s Alliance Axel, Brian, 42 Axios. See Vardar Bakhtin, Mikhail, 16n9 Bakić-Hayden, Milica, 16n4 Banac, Ivo, 28, 37, 128 bar, 105, 107. See also café, čajdzilnica, kafana, kafič Baringo, 5 Barok, 1–3, 63–64, 135, 137, 145. See also Baroque, furniture Baroque, 2, 115–20, 134–40, 144–50; aesthetics, 116, 144, 146; architecture, 2; effect, 115, 145; mechanism, 115, 145; neo-, 2, 63, 134, 144, 146; style, 1, 2, 63, 118–19, 121, 135–36, 140n10, 144. See also Barok, classical, original Basch, Linda, 42 Baučić, Ivo, 25, 29, 30 Baudrilliard, Jean, 10 Belgium, 22, 62, 140n11 Benjamin, Walter, 94, 95, 107, 110, 111 Berdahl, Daphne, 7, 105 Berman, Nathaniel, 126 Beverley, John, 136 bezisten (bedesten), 101, 102. See also čaršija, market Bhabha, Homi, 69 birth, 11, 34, 36, 74. See also rape, reproduction, sexuality body, 69, 84, 85, 87, 89n7 Bogdanović, Bogdan, 135 border, 14, 17n11, 22, 23, 42, 85, 109, 126, 127, 129, 132, 145. See also emigration, immigration, migrants, migration Borneman, John, 12, 85

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Borromini, Francesco, 135 Bosnia, 8, 16n6, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 34, 85, 87, 105 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6, 68, 73, 148 Bourgeoisie, 26, 59, 100, 144 Boym, Svetlana, 59, 70n6 Božinovski, Vangel, 135, 140n10 Bracewell, Wendy, 86n6 brand, 1, 3, 145, 146, 148, 149; national, 137, 146, 149; re-, 111, 138, 149. See also Barok, copyright, name Britain, 34. See also London Brooklyn, 41–42 brotherhood and unity, 27, 86, 105. See also nonalignment, self-management Brown, Keith, 16n3, 33, 126, 127 Brubaker, Rogers, 33 Brunnbauer, Ulf, 21, 60 Bucharest, 125, 130. See also Romania Buchli, Victor, 6, 10, 59, 68, 70n6 Buck-Morss, Susan, 92, 107, 110 Bugarski, Ranko, 73 building, 1–2, 7, 22, 39, 56, 58–61, 68, 83, 93, 98–105, 109, 110, 112, 116– 19, 128, 133–37, 139n4, 145; re-, 1. |See also architecture, construction, house Bulgaria, 14, 39, 61, 62, 97, 113n5, 126, 128, 130. See also language, nationalism Burundi, 140n11 business, 13, 20, 22, 24, 37, 43, 54, 57, 62, 63, 65, 82; -man, 3, 139n5; private, 24, 43, 56, 57, 105, 111. See also company, corporation, economy, factory, firm, owner Butler, Judith, 11 café, 21, 22, 67, 77, 81, 105–7. See also bar, čajdzilnica, kafana, kafič Čair, 133. See also Skopje čajdzilnica, 103, 106. See also bar, café, kafana, kafič Canada, 28, 61. See also America capital (city), 144; of Macedonia, 1, 12, 109, 111, 117, 128, 137; Priština, 31. See also Skopje capital (means), 68, 149; economic and symbolic, 42, 62, 68, 111. See also capitalism, money, economy

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capitalism, vii, 144; capitalist, 7, 27, 29, 36, 95, 109; compete with, 8; global, 12. See also capital, communism, economy, globalization Caribbean, 21 čaršija, 96, 109. See also bezisten, market Catholics, 44n4, 149. See also Christian, church, religion Ceaușescu, Nicolae, 8 Celebija, Evlija, 96 Certeau, Michel de, 111 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 70n7 change, 6, 7, 24, 29, 31, 37, 39, 42, 44n7, 55, 57–59, 64, 73, 78, 86, 111, 130, 131, 137, 145; economic, vii, 3, 4, 29, 43, 69; social, vii, 2, 68, 69, 75, 79–80, 149; spatial, 100, 102, 105, 110 Cherkez, 96, 97. See also Muslim Christian, 44n4, 95–98, 116; Orthodox, 44n4, 60, 97, 98, 112n3, 134, 135; Christianization, 115, 116, 137; and Muslim, 95, 97; population, 44n4, 97, 98. See also Catholics, Christianity, church, Protestants, religion Christianity, 149; Orthodox, 40, 108. See also Christian Christopoulos, Dimitrios, 127 church, 14, 40, 97, 98, 99, 102, 113n5, 128, 133–37; Catholic, 136, 137; -museum, 133–34; Orthodox, 102, 134. See also Christian, mosque, religion, St. Dimitrija, St. Mina, St. Nicholas, Sveta Trojca circulation, 147; of capital, 42, 149; circulate, 65, 93, 149 circumcision. See sunet class, vii, 1–4, 6, 8, 9, 12–15, 27, 33, 42, 50–52, 68, 70n2, 70n4, 70n5, 75, 85, 92, 110, 144, 149; first-, 85; middle-, 7; mobility, 9, 75, 92, 111; privileges, 13, 14, 43, 54, 58, 61, 68, 69; second-, 85; working, 13, 15, 20, 51, 86. See also gender, relations, society classical, 117, 118, 121, 127, 135, 139n5; neo-, 2, 109, 118, 134, 136. See also Baroque cleansing (ethnic), 16n2, 39, 44n6, 85. See ethnicity Clifford, James, 42

Code of Lekë Dukagjini. See Kanun Cold War, 7; post-, 7, 9 Cole, Johnetta B., 73, 86 Cole, Mike, 73 college, 53, 72–73, 83, 106; degree, 53, 72–73, 82, 87; students, 34, 81. See also education, emancipation, illiteracy Collier, Jane Fishburne, 85, 89n7 Comaroff, Jean, 145, 146, 150n3 Comaroff, John, 145, 146. 150n3 commodities, 4, 6, 8, 20, 50, 57, 58, 61– 62, 65, 68, 69, 146; and consumption, vii, 3, 5, 8; imported, 13, 14, 61; quasicommodities, 149; range of, 5; Western, 8, 24, 31, 43. See also artifacts, goods, objects, products, things communism, 29, 36, 37; Communist Alliance of Yugoslavia, 29; communist consumer culture, 7. See also capitalism, Marxism, party, socialism company, 1, 51–53, 63. See also Barok, business, corporation, factory, firm construction, 4, 5, 7, 11, 54, 86, 93, 97, 98, 100, 110, 117–20, 134, 139n5, 146, 149; re-, 1, 110, 145, 149. See also architecture, building consumer, 3, 7–9, 31, 43, 145–46, 149; consumerism, 7–9, 31; culture, 7–9, 31; goods, 7, 9, 51. See also consumption, customers consumption, vii, 3–10, 15, 20–21, 43, 68, 70n2, 107, 115; conspicuous, 107, 112; practices, 4, 7, 10, 20, 42–43, 59 conversion. See Islam Coombe, Rosemary, 149 copyright, 147. See also brand, name (dispute) corporation, 57, 146. See also business, company, factory, firm Coulby, David, 73 Cowan, Jane, 126, 127, 128 Cox, Margaret, 6 crafts and trades, 99–102 Croatia, 16n6, 16n7, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 37, 55, 85, 87, 105, 125–26; Croatian Spring, 37. See also language, Yugoslavia Crvenkovski, Branko, 134 Čubrilović, Vaso, 26, 43. See also Ranković culture: Albanian, 74–75, 87; ethnic, 85;

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material, 5–6, 10; micro-, 84; Ministry of, 125, 134, 137; popular, 11; Turkish, 26. See also consumer customers, 3 Czechoslovakia, 36, 51 Dahinden, Janine, 44n2 Dalakoglou, Dimitris, 44n2 Danforth, Loring, 16n3 danger, 24, 59, 67, 69, 81, 94, 112, 131, 139n4. See also anxiety, fear, psychoanalysis, threat daughter-in-law, 52, 56, 58, 65, 75, 81–83. See also father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law Davis, Mike, 111 Debar, 40, 88 De Cesari, Chiara, 137 decoration, 3, 53, 58, 107, 121, 136; exterior, 100; interior, 9, 72; re-, 60, 64. See also exterior, furniture, goblen, interior, jambolija, lions, living room Delaney, Carol Lowery, 85 Delčev, Goce: monument, 1, 122; bridge, 121 Demetriou, Olga, 86, 113n8 democracy, 8, 12, 28, 116, 125, 133, 146; new, 4, 11, 112 Democratic League of Kosovo, 46n16. See also Rugova desire, vii, 3, 10, 11, 31, 32, 78, 83, 86, 107. See also psychoanalysis development, 27, 28, 34, 35, 45n9, 45n13, 99; under-, 25, 28, 30, 34, 37. See also economy dialect: Kumanovo, 96, 112n1; Vardar, 128 diaspora, 42; Albanian, 42, 44n2, 108; Kosovars, 41. See also diasporic diasporic: circuits, 42; connections, 20, 24, 42, 111; networks, 25, 43 Dimiškovska, Ljubica Grozdanovska, 135 Dimova, Rozita, 33, 111, 113, 126, 127, 128, 131 discontinuity, 6, 10, 109. See also time displacement, 16n6, 22. See also refugees Divo Naselje, 92–94, 108, 115. See also Kumanovo Djilas, Milovan, 8, 70n5

F 155

Dobbs, Michael, 31 doctrine, 116. See also VMRO dominance. See Serbia Dominican Republic, 140n11 Donnan, Hastings, 50 Douglas, Mary, 6 dowry, 62, 63, 65. See also engagement, marriage, tradition, wedding Droukas, Eugenia, 20 Dukagjin: Plain of, 37. See also Dukagjini, Kanun, Metohija, Rrafshi i Dukagjinit Dukagjini, Lekë. See Kanun Dukovska, Elena, 121 Dukovski, Darko, 121 Dyker, David, 126 earthquake (of 1963), 1, 109, 111, 118, 134, 145 east. See Europe, Germany economy, 30, 54, 138; bazaar, 105; decentralization of the, 27; of Kosovo, 34; (free) market, 1, 3–5, 27, 42, 43, 57, 107, 108, 111; neoliberal, 3, 4; political, vii, 8, 9, 69, 145; Soviet, 12; Yugoslav, 28. See also business, capitalism, development, globalization, industrialization, market, money, structure education, 14–15, 26, 31, 51, 53, 58, 62, 72–83, 86–88, 88n1, 96, 103, 131. See also college, emancipation, illiteracy Egypt, 5. See also Africa elite, 3, 66, 70n1, 127, 144; Albanian, 87; Macedonian, 51; Serbian elite, 39–40 Ellis, Burcu Akan, 33, 44n5 Elsie, Robert, 26 emancipation, 12, 15, 51, 55, 60–61, 72, 80–81, 83, 86–87, 108, 149. See also education, gender, women embargo, 105. See also name dispute emigration: of Albanians, 26, 30, 43, 44n5, 57; forced, 20, 26, 43, 45n10; from Kumanovo, 32; to Turkey, 26; from Yugoslavia, 30, 32, 43, 44n5. See also border, émigré, immigration, migrants, migration émigré, 21, 24, 25, 32, 41–43. See also emigration, immigration, migrants, migration

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emotion, 35, 115, 136, 137, 146. See also affect, feeling, psychoanalysis, sentiment empowerment, 23, 43, 86. See also emancipation, gender, money, power, sexuality, women engagement, 22, 23. See also dowry, marriage, tradition, wedding Enyedi, Gyorgy, 102 Eski Cami, 96, 98. See also Jeni Cami, Kumanovo ethnicity, vii, 3, 4, 9, 12, 14, 16n5, 42, 51, 52, 57, 60, 61, 66–69, 74, 82, 84–88, 92, 93, 96, 97, 106–7, 110, 112, 130–32, 134, 146, 149; Albanian, 39, 42, 85, 86. See also Albanians, cleansing, identity, Macedonians, minority, tension ethnonationalism, 3, 10, 15, 16n5, 20–21, 33, 76, 87, 129, 133. See also tension Europe, 25, 32, 34, 35, 45n12, 50, 84, 89n4, 100, 105, 127, 135–36, 137, 144; central, 101, 102; Eastern, 7, 11, 27; Europeanization, 145; northern, 21; postwar, 21; rural, 21; southern, 21; Western, 2, 21, 22, 25, 28, 30–32, 62. See also European Union European Union (EU), 130, 138; membership, 41, 146. See also Europe, NATO, United Nations exchange, 7, 12, 22, 32, 36, 144, 145 exterior, 3, 58, 93, 105. See also decoration, interior façade, 93, 100, 118, 119, 120. See also interior factory, 2, 3, 14, 34, 35, 50, 51, 63, 100, 102, 132, 145. See also business, company, corporation, firm family, 7, 22, 23, 32, 51–54, 56, 58, 60–62, 64, 65, 67–68, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80–84, 99, 103, 116–17, 130, 139; members, 22, 43, 54, 57, 72, 75, 130. See also household, relatives fantasy, 11, 15, 94, 107, 108. See also psychoanalysis Fascists, 119. See also antifascist, Italy father-in-law, 64. See also daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, sister-in-law

fear, 3, 15, 21, 22, 24, 26, 32, 33, 38, 41, 50, 54–55, 60, 62, 67, 69, 76, 77, 81, 82, 87–88, 88n1, 94, 131–32. See also anxiety, danger, psychoanalysis, threat feeling, 1, 4, 10, 11, 22, 55, 58, 59, 61, 68, 77, 103, 110, 115, 130. See also emotion, psychoanalysis, sentiment Fehervary, Krisztina, 7 feud, 39, 79. See also vendetta fieldwork, 4, 12–14, 21, 25–26, 42, 51, 57, 62–63, 65, 77, 85, 106, 110, 113n7 firm, 58, 113n7. See also business, company, corporation, factory Fitzpatrick, Peter, 15, 86 flag, 23, 128, 140n11; Albanian, 22, 23, 24, 44n1. See also Star of Vergina force, 10, 12, 37, 38, 41, 45n10, 46n16, 80, 107, 115, 130, 138, 147; work-, 30, 45n10, 80. See also KFOR Foucault, Michel, 10, 73, 148 fountain, 1, 123, 124, 125. See also labyrinth, park, Skopje Fouron, Georges Eugene, 21 France, 30, 136 Freud, Sigmund. See Oedipal phase Friedman, Jonathan, 6 Friedman, Victor A., 17n10, 44n7, 126, 127, 128 Fuery, Patrick, 11 furniture, 1–3, 14, 53, 59, 64–65, 100, 136, 137, 145, 149; new (modern), 53, 56, 58, 62–66, 106, 107; old (classic), 52. See also decoration, interior, living room, minderlak, wood Gajdov, Stefan, 121 Gardner, Helen, 136 garnizon, 22. See also Kumanovo GDR. See Germany Gelevski, Nikola, 135 gender, vii, 3, 4, 9, 12, 24, 42, 84–86, 110, 139, 149; antagonism, 12; distinctions, 3, 4, 95; relations, vii, 9, 85. See also class, emancipation, empowerment, masculinity, men, relations, sexuality, society, women Georgievski, Ljupčo, 117, 139n2

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Index

Germany, 12, 22, 34, 41, 42, 74, 78, 85; East (German Democratic Republic), 7; Western, 30, 45. See also women Gingrich, Andre, 50 Glick Schiller, Nina, 21, 42 globalization, 43. See also capitalism, economy goblen, 53. See also decoration, interior, jambolija, living room goods, 10, 23, 57, 62, 99, 102; conspicuous and pricey, 25; consumer, 7, 9, 51; luxury, 8; and objects, 6; and services, 8, 102; Western, 7. See also artifacts, commodities, products, things Gostivar, 44n1, 88 Graan, Andrew, 135, 137, 139n3, 145 grandeur, 2, 127, 136. See also Baroque, size Grandits, Hannes, 128 Greece, vii, 14, 17n11, 21, 22, 61, 62, 68, 85, 105, 107, 116, 124–29, 130, 136, 138–39, 147, 148; Albanians in, 20; Greek Macedonia, 126, 127; Greek Patriarchate, 113n5; Northern, 86, 113n8. See also embargo, Greeks, household, Komotini, language, minority, name dispute, nationalism, Star of Vergina Greeks, 44, 96; ancient, 34; in Kumanovo, 97, 99, 126. See also Greece Green, Sarah F., 20, 40, 127 Gruev, Dame, 122 Gruevski, Nikola, 117 gurbet, 21 Hadži-Konstantinov, Jordan, 121 Hadži-Vasiljević, Jovan, 95, 96, 97, 98, 112 Hann, Chris, 8 Harre, Rom, 147 Hart, Jason, 76 Hayden, Robert, 16n4 Healy, Langdon, 40 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 10–11, 16n8, 147 Helms, Elissa, 89 Herzegovina, 16n6, 25, 28, 29, 32, 85, 87, 105

F 157

Herzfeld, Michael, 85, 126, 127 hierarchy, 65, 111, 149; hierarch(ic)al, 84, 139; of nations, 138–39; social, vii, 51 historicism, 94, 111 history, 3–4, 42, 94–95, 110–11, 126, 136–37, 144, 149, 150n1–2; of Albania, 37; of Kosovo, 36; of Kumanovo, 94, 100, 110; of Macedonia, 17n11, 33, 119–20, 134–35, 144–45; of Yugoslavia, 20, 27 Hodder, Ian, 5, 6 hodja, 68 Holmes, Douglas, 50 Holston, James, 111 homosexuality. See sexuality honor, 76, 84, 89n3; killings, 77, 79, 87. See also bravery, feud, patriotism, pride, tradition, vendetta hooks, bell, 86 house, 56, 64, 82, 89n3, 92–93, 98, 100, 108–9; big, 23, 93, 112, 115, 149; furnishings, 52, 53, 58, 63, 65, 108, 115; new, 20, 51, 94, 108; surrounded by walls, 39, 52. See also building household, 4, 31, 50, 54, 56, 59, 65, 72, 82, 115; Albanian, 52, 55, 58, 80; extended, 30–31, 56, 65, 77, 78, 82, 83; Greek, 97; Macedonian 57, 68; Muslim, 93; nuclear, 83. See also family, relatives Hoxha, Enver, 8, 36, 37 Hoxha, Hajredin, 26, 34, 36, 44n5 Hrabak, Bogumil, 46n15 Humphrey, Caroline, 7 Hungary, 7, 51, 68, 70n4, 88n1, 109, 133n7. See also Austria-Hungary Hutson, Scott, 5, 6 Iceland, 61 identity, 3, 5, 9, 10, 14, 37, 42, 67, 69, 129, 145–49; national, 3, 15, 85, 116, 128; social, 2, 3, 112. See also ethnicity ideology, vii, 6, 8, 11, 14, 21, 35, 36, 52, 86, 95, 107, 110; ideological project, 2, 111, 115; national(ist), 3, 15, 38, 107, 109, 126, 138, 148; socialist, 27, 102; working class, 15, 86 illiteracy, 34. See also education

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immigration, 28, 30; Russian immigrant, 100. See also border, emigration, migrants, migration impossibility, 7, 87, 126; of nation, 15, 86, 87; of sexual relations, 86 incorporation, 3, 76, 137, 145–46, 148 independence, 3–4, 13–14, 16n3, 20, 23–24, 27, 31, 38, 41–43, 46n16, 54, 56–57, 69, 73, 79–80, 94–95, 103, 111, 116, 119–21, 123, 126. See also Macedonia indigo, 111 industrialization, 25, 102. See also economy interior (architecture), 3, 9, 58, 72, 82, 93, 100, 105–7, 119. See also decoration, exterior, furniture, living room interior (politics): minister of, 26–27, 35, 36 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity. See VMRO “invisibility”, 108; “invisible”, 44n4, 104. See also visibility Ioannina. See Janina Isherwood, Baron C., 6 Islam, 61, 94, 102–3, 108; anti-Islamic rhetoric, 95; in the Balkans, 26; conversions to, 44n4, 97; presence of, 95, 98, 100. See also Islamic, mosque, Muslim, Quran, religion Islamic, 95; architecture, 113n6; building, 103; fighters; 131; housing, 94; practice, 93. See also Islam, mosque, Muslim, Quran, religion Italy, 21, 65, 107, 109, 122; Fascist, 45n14. See also Borromini Ivanović, Vladimir, 29, 30 jambolija, 53. See also decoration, goblen, interior, living room Janev, Goran, 135 Janev, Konstantin, 121 Janina, 99 Jansen, Stef, 89n6 Jeni Cami, 98, 104. See also Eski Cami, Kumanovo Jeni Maalo, 104. See also Kumanovo

JNA. See army Johnson, Allan, 86 Jončić, Koča, 28, 29 kafana, 106. See also bar, café, čajdzilnica, kafič kafič, 106, 107. See also bar, café, čajdzilnica, kafana kale: Skopsko, 133–34; Tetovo, 134. See also Skopje, Tetovo Kamusella, Tomasz, 73 Kănčov, Vasil, 97 Kanun (of Lekë Dukagjini), 79, 89n3 Kanuni i Leke Dukagjinit. See Kanun Karakasidou, Anastasia N., 128 kasaba, 95 Kasapski Krug, 101. See also Kumanovo KFOR, 23, 106, 130. See also army, NATO Khrushchev, Nikita, 8, 36 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. See Yugoslavia KLA. See Kosovo Liberation Army Kligman, Gail, 89n7 knowledge, 16n8, 28, 45n10, 65, 81, 107, 110. See also education, power Koliševski, Lazar, 38, 45n13 Komarica, Zvonimir, 29 komoda, 58–60, 64 Komotini, 113n8. See also Greece Koneski, Blaže, 121 Korovilas, James, 44n2 Kosova (Kosovë), 37, 38, 45n12–13. See also Kosovo Kosovo, 24–46, 79–89, 129–32; Albanians in Macedonia and, 14, 33, 42, 80, 110; protests in, 26, 27, 30, 31, 35–37, 39, 46n15, 55, 73; economy of, 16n7, 25–28, 30, 34; independence of, 30–32, 37–38, 41; and migration, 9, 26, 29, 32; refugees from, 22–23, 42; status of, 9, 16n6, 23, 31, 33, 38; war, 23, 42. See also army, diaspora, economy, history, KFOR, Kosova, minority, Muslim, Priština Kosovo Force. See KFOR Kosovo Liberation Army, 42, 129. See also army

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Kostopoulos, Tasos, 127, 128 Kumanovo, 1, 3, 4, 12, 14, 21–25, 32, 39–40, 44, 50–51, 54, 57–62, 65–69, 70n3, 72, 78–79, 81, 89n5, 92–105, 107, 109–12, 112n1–4, 113n6–7, 115, 130, 132, 140n9, 145; central square of, 59. See also architecture, emigration, Eski Cami, garnizon, history, Jeni Cami, Kasapski Krug, minority, mosque, Sokolana labyrinth, 1, 52. See also fountain, park, Skopje Lacan, Jacques, 11, 16n9, 86 lack, 10–12, 15, 147; of civilization, 108; of contact, 67; of education, 31, 79, 82; of emancipation, 55; of medical insurance, 57; of prospects, 32, 79; of space, 100; of style, 62, 69. See also loss, psychoanalysis Laclau, Ernesto, 15 Lambert, Gregg, 2, 115, 136 Lambevski, Sasho, 15, 75, 76 Lampe, John R, 25, 126 language, 35, 38, 88n1, 96, 126, 131, 147; Albanian, 14, 17n10, 34, 37, 72, 79, 80, 97, 131, 139n7; of brands, 149; Bulgarian, 128; Greek, 127; according to Jacques Lacan, 11, 16n9; Macedonian, 14, 128, 131; native, 73; official, 131; Romeic, 127; Russian, 73; Serbian, 73; Serbo-Croatian, 73; visual, 146; Vlach, 100. See also dialect Latour, Bruno, 6 Latvia, 74–76 Lazaridis, Gabriela, 20 League of the Communists of Serbia, 36. See also communism, party Lebanon, 12 Lefebvre, Henri, 111 Leko, Dimitrie, 140n10 Lianos Theodore, 20 liberation, 27, 33, 102, 130. See also independence, Kosovo Liberation Army, time Ličenoski, Lazar, 121 lifestyle, 13, 20, 31, 52, 54–57, 62, 69, 81–83; Western, 7

F  159

Limanoski, Nijazi, 44n4 lions, 93, 121, 123, 134. See also decoration, exterior, VMRO living room, 2, 53, 58, 63, 64, 67. See also furniture, interior, salon London, 130. See also Britain loss, vii, 3–4, 9–15, 24, 50, 56, 58, 61, 69, 94, 103, 108; of privilege, 13, 14, 43, 54, 58, 68, 69, 112. See also affect, emotion, lack, psychoanalysis Lucas, Gavin, 6 luxury, 1, 7, 8, 24, 61, 63, 66, 106. See also money maalo, 95, 112n1. See also Jeni Maalo Macedonia, 1–19, 31–34, 39–46, 57, 68–69, 75, 79–80, 85–89, 93–98, 104, 109–13, 137–39, 145–49; ancient, 126, 147; Greek, 126–27; (Former Yugoslav) Republic of, 1, 12, 33, 45n13, 68, 121, 125, 127, 128; socialist, 5; western, 14, 24, 29, 31, 39, 57, 75, 80, 88, 132. See also army, Debar, elite, flag, Gostivar, history, household, independence, Kumanovo, Macedonians, “Macedonia 2014”, Muslim, name dispute, nationalism, party, relations, rich, Skopje, society, Star of Vergina, Struga, Tetovo, Vardar, Veles, women Macedonia (square in Skopje), 116, 119, 121, 123, 125, 128, 133, 135, 140n10. See also fountain, kale, labyrinth, park, Skopje Macedonians, 20–33, 41, 50–62, 70n4, 88, 92–94, 130–35; and Albanians, 4–5, 10, 13–14, 21, 27, 61, 66–69, 70n4, 73, 87, 106–12; ethnic, 13, 14, 20, 23–24, 30, 43, 51, 54, 56, 57, 62, 67, 69, 72, 110, 130–32, 140n9. See also ethnicity, Macedonia, men, women “Macedonia 2014”, 2 madrassa, 89, 102, 103. See also education majority, 35, 127, 149; Albanian, 29, 33, 34, 37, 88, 95; Christian, 95; Macedonian, 13, 95, 109, 132; Turkish, 94. See also minority Mangarovski, Kosta, 121 Manitoba, 61. See also Canada

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Mankekar, Purnima, 85, 89n7 Manning, Paul, 149 Maravall, Jose Antonio, 115, 136 market, 8, 30, 59, 109, 144, 150n3; of Europe, 45n12; free, 3, 4, 9; in Kumanovo, 99, 101–6; -oriented, 43. See also bezisten, čaršija, economy, globalization marriage, 55, 65, 78, 79, 82, 83, 134; family and, 84; for love, 82; mixed, 87–88. See also dowry, engagement, tradition, wedding Martinoski, Nikola, 121 Marxism, 27, 36, 38, 111. See also communism, socialism masculinity, 39, 72, 74–75, 79, 83, 84–85, 89n6. See also gender, men, relatives, society, women Matejče, 51, 132. See also Kumanovo materiality, vii, 2–6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 20, 92, 95, 111, 115–17, 149 Mazev, Petar, 121 Mazower, Mark, 126 Mazzarella, William, 137 McCarthy, Justin, 44n6 McClintock, Anne, 76, 89n7 memory, 3–4, 107, 134 men, 74–79, 83–89, 103, 129; Albanian, 72, 74–81, 83, 86, 88, 106; Macedonian, 75, 76, 88, 89n2; “real”, 74, 79, 83. See also gender, masculinity, relatives, women Mertus, Julie, 89n7 Meskell, Lynn, 5, 6 Metohija, 26, 35, 37, 46n15. See also Dukagjin, Rrafshi i Dukagjinit migrants, vii, 20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 42, 53, 56; Albanian, 21; poor, 21. See also border, emigration, immigration, migration migration, 9, 20, 25–32, 41–44, 44n3, 44n6, 44n7; forced, 43, 45n10, 61, 97; labor, 27, 28; policy, 20, 27, 29, 31, 43. See also border, emigration, immigration, migrants Mijalkovik, Milan, 145 Miladinov, Dimitar, 121 Miladinov, Konstantin, 121 Miller, Daniel, 5, 6, 11

Miller, Nick, 32, 37 minderlak, 53. See also furniture, interior minority, 15, 20, 33, 35, 37–38, 73, 76, 86–87, 127, 138, 149; ethnic, 9, 23–24, 33, 77, 79; in Greece, 127–28; in Kosovo, 33–34, 40–41, 87; in Kumanovo, 95, 111, 132; in Macedonia, 23, 33–34, 41, 79, 85, 87; in Montenegro, 34; underprivileged, 9, 20; in Yugoslavia, 20, 24, 33, 37, 43. See also majority Misirkov, Krste Petkov, 121 modernity, 12, 73–77, 86–87, 107, 113n6, 127, 136, 144 modernization, 25, 44n8, 67, 102 money, 1, 21, 53, 56, 60, 61, 62, 74, 75, 82, 93, 107, 108, 109, 129, 135, 144, 149; send, 56, 74. See also capital, economy, luxury, remittances, struggle Montenegro, 8, 28, 32–35, 41, 44n3, 44n5. See also minority Morrison, Kenneth, 44n3 mosque: in Kumanovo, 96, 98, 103; in Skopje, 133–34. See also church, Islam, Muslim, Quran, religion mother-in-law, 83. See also daughter-inlaw, father-in-law, sister-in-law Muslim, 26, 35, 39, 44n6, 44n7, 53, 65, 93, 95–98, 101, 104, 110; Albanian, 26, 44n4, 97; anti-, 103; and Christian, 97, 98, 112n3; from Kosovo, 26, 34; Macedonian, 3; Romani, 128; population, 39, 97; tradition, 22, 39. See also Cherkez, Christian, household, Islam, Islamic, mosque, Quran, religion Nagel, Joane, 84 name, vii, 14, 37, 39, 40, 68, 94, 95, 111, 116, 119, 124, 125, 133, 147–49; naming, 128, 147–48; renaming, 39. See also brand, copyright, name dispute name dispute, 14, 68, 116, 124–29, 138– 39, 146–48. See also antiquitization, Greece nationalism, 3, 4, 10, 15, 42, 44n4, 84, 87, 107, 109, 126, 127, 138, 139, 145; Albanian, 76, 84; Bulgarian, 126;

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Greek, 126; Macedonian, 41, 42, 60, 68, 75, 86, 94, 109, 128, 148; Serbian, 126 nation-state, 5, 41, 73, 76, 79, 84, 85, 87, 112, 126–28, 145, 150n2 NATO, 130, 138; bombardment, 13, 22, 23, 106; general secretary of, 130; meeting, 125; membership, 41, 146; offensive, 16n6; soldiers, 89n2. See also army, European Union, KFOR, United Nations Neofotistos, Vasiliki, 24, 89n6, 131, 139n6 Netherlands, 30, 134 Newman, Jane, 136, 150n1 New York Times, 37, 41 New Zealand, 61 NGO, 41, 57, 75, 80, 130, 133, 135. See also Albanian Women’s Alliance, Amnesty International, Razbudi Se Nikolovski, Vlastimir, 121 Nikuštak, 51. See also Kumanovo Nixon, Rob, 85 NLA. See army nonalignment, 27. See also brotherhood and unity, self-management non-governmental organization. See NGO nouveaux riches, 3, 57, 62, 69, 70n1. See also rich, wealth object, 5–8, 10–11, 16n8, 50, 65, 68, 111, 119, 145–49, 150n3; anthropological, 5; material, 3, 4, 6, 10, 20, 50, 61, 62, 107, 108. See also anthropology, archaeology, psychoanalysis Oedipal phase, 11 Oficirski dom, 1, 118. See also Skopje Ohrid Framework Agreement, 24, 131–32, 133, 138, 139n7 original, 1, 2, 134. See also Baroque Orta Bunar, 51, 58, 93, 101, 103, 104, 106, 108. See also Kumanovo Orthodox. See Christian, Christianity, church Ottoman: Empire, 25, 40, 44n6, 100–103, 108, 121, 136; period, 89n5, 94, 103, 108–11, 126–27, 133, 135, 145; rule, 40, 44n4, 94, 100, 113n6, 119, 127, 137. See also architecture, period, Turkey

F 161

Oushakine, Serguei, 12 owner, 1, 3, 9, 57, 61, 63, 68, 77, 94, 99, 100, 107, 115, 145; -ship, 3, 8, 94, 107, 146. See also business, property Pajazit, Nushi, 26 Pakistan, 42 Palikruševa, Galaba, 44n4 Paris, 118 Paris Peace Conference, 26, 130 park, 23, 105, 129. See also fountain, labyrinth, park, Skopje party, 8, 67, 105, 133, 137, 138, 139n2; Albanian Communist, 35, 45n13; communist, 105; for Democratic Integration, 89; for Democratic Prosperity, 41, 130; socialist, 105; Yugoslav Communist, 28, 36. See also communism, Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia, VMRO passport, 29. See also travel, visa Patterson, Patrick, 8, 30, 31, 70n5 Pavlović, Srdja, 44n3 PDP. See party pečalbarstvo, 21 period, 12, 13, 23, 25–26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 39, 40, 43, 67, 94, 97, 116, 119, 135–36, 144, 147, 150n1; Ottoman, 112, 145; post-Ottoman, 94, 108, 112; postsocialist, 1, 4, 6–7, 10, 20, 50, 94, 95, 105, 110; post-9/11, 11; socialist, vii, 7, 15, 52, 54, 67, 94, 110, 118; thaw, 8. See also postsocialist, socialism, Stalin, time, 9/11 Philip II of Macedon, 127–28. See also Alexander the Great, “Skopje 2014”, Star of Vergina Pichler, Robert, 44n2 Pittaway, Mark, 68 Poland, 51, 70n4, 109 poor, 9, 16n7, 21, 30, 31, 43, 44n3, 64, 103; Albanians, 50, 57, 69; backward and, 13, 14; spiritually, 62 Popov, Stale, 121 Portugal, 21 postsocialist, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 9, 20, 21, 105; subject, 117. See also period, socialism

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power, 2, 24, 33, 50, 69, 73–76, 92, 93, 108, 116–17, 136, 144, 148, 149; of objects, 6, 58, 62; purchasing (consumption), 9, 43, 61, 115; of symbols, 5, 58, 127. See also empowerment, knowledge practice, 11–12, 15, 16n9, 51, 69, 95, 144, 149; everyday, 4, 111; Islamic, 93; sexual, 76; wedding, 67. See also consumption prerodba, 116. See also revival primitivism, 5 primordialism, 4, 16n4, 79 Priština, 31, 34, 37, 43, 80, 82, 130. See also Kosovo Prličev, Grigor, 121 Prličko, Petre, 121 production, 1, 7, 8, 16n2, 34, 99, 102, 144, 146, 149 products, 3, 7, 35, 146, 149. See also artifacts, commodities, goods, things Proeski, Toše, 121 Prohor Pčinski, 32 Prokopiev, Trajko, 121 property, 43, 85, 108, 146, 149. See also business, owner prostitution, 75. See also trafficking Protestants, 44n4. See also Christian, church, Reformation, religion psychoanalysis, 11, 115. See also anthropology, archaeology, desire, emotion, fantasy, fear, Lacan, lack, loss, object, repression, subjectivity, trauma Qosja, Rexhep, 32, 38, 39 Quran: Quranic scripture, 64. See also Islam, mosque, Muslim, religion Racin, Kočo, 121 racism, 10; racist, 40, 67, 68, 115 Ranković, Aleksandar, 26–27, 35, 36–37, 43. See also Čubrilović rape, 85, 87. See also birth, reproduction, sexuality Razbudi Se, 133–34. See also NGO refugees, 22–23, 41–42. See also displacement Reid, Susan, 8 Reineck, Janet, 44n8

Reformation: Protestant, 136; Counter-, 136 relations, 6, 9, 25, 33, 44n2, 44n3, 68, 94, 107, 137, 138, 140n11, 144, 148, 149; class, vii; cultural, 36; economic, 36, 85, 111; of power, 24; sexual, 74, 75, 86; social, vii, 13, 14, 51; symbolic, 21; Yugoslav-Albanian, 27, 33, 36, 38. See also class, gender, society relatives, 21, 22, 32, 42, 44, 44n2, 54, 56, 66; abroad, 13, 20, 22, 24, 32, 43, 44, 57, 62, 63, 108, 130; male, 22, 81, 106. See also family religion, 14, 102, 108, 110, 112, 126, 129; Muslim, 39. See also Christian, church, Islam, mosque, Muslim, Quran remittances, 21, 42. See also money repression, 35, 41, 44, 84, 115. See also psychoanalysis reproduction, 60, 76, 85, 87. See also birth, rape, sexuality revival, 96, 111, 116–17, 125, 137, 149. See also prerodba rich, 1, 3, 16n7, 30, 58, 61, 62, 63, 108; Albanians, 57, 62, 66, 108; enrichment, 13; Macedonians, 14, 50, 57, 68; newly, 1, 82; Turks, 98. See also nouveaux riches, wealth Ricoeur, Paul, 147, 148 Robertson, George (Baron Robertson of Port Ellen), 130. See also NATO Rodrigue, Aron, 25, 127 Roma, 62, 96, 97, 106, 108, 109, 127, 128, 132 Romania, 100. See also Bucharest Romanovce, 51. See also Kumanovo Romantic (architecture), 118 Rouse, Roger, 42 Rrafshi i Dukagjinit, 37. See also Metohija, Dukagjin Rugova, Ibrahim, 41–42, 46n16. See also Democratic League of Kosovo Rusinow, Dennison I., 28, 34, 35, 45n9, 70n5, 128 Russel, King, 44 Russia, 12, 59, 62, 97. See economy, immigration, language, Soviet Union, wealth

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Index 

Salecl, Renata, 15 salon, 64. See also living room Sampson, Steven, 70n1 Šar Planina, 42 Saudi Arabia, 63, 65 Schäuble, Michaela, 89n6 Schierup, Carl-Ulrik, 29, 30 SDSM. See Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 148 self-management, 27, 36, 52. See also brotherhood and unity, nonalignment sentiment, 35, 132. See also emotion, feeling, psychoanalysis Serbia, 14, 16n6–7, 22, 23, 26, 28, 31–34, 37–41, 44n3, 65, 96, 100, 105, 106, 110, 112n1, 112n3, 130, 136; Kingdom, 34; Old (South), 95; Serbian Academy of Sciences, 39; Serbian anti-Albanian policy, 27, 35, 39, 40, 85; Serbian dominance, 26, 35, 41, 73, 100. See also elite, language, nationalism, Yugoslavia Serbs, 13, 32, 37, 39–40, 58, 62, 106, 109, 112n4, 130. See also Serbia sexuality, 74–76, 80; female, 84, 86, 88; homo-, 75; sexual freedom, 15, 81. See also birth, emancipation, family, gender, impossibility, rape, reproduction Šiptar, 37, 45n11; -ka, 74, 76; -ski, 37, 108. See also Albanians Šiškov, Risto, 121 sister-in-law, 75. See also daughter-in-law, father-in-law, mother-in-law size, 2, 63, 93, 100, 115, 138, 145; of ethnic groups, 131. See also Baroque, grandeur Skalovski, Todor, 121 SKJ. See communism, party Skopje, 1–4, 12, 22, 24, 32, 40, 52, 57, 62, 65, 67, 70n2, 93, 96, 99, 106, 109, 111, 117, 120–23, 130, 132–37, 140n10, 145–46; central, 115–18, 121, 128, 134. See also Čair, fountain, kale, labyrinth, Macedonia (square), Oficirski dom, park, revival, “Skopje 2014”, urban planning “Skopje 2014”, ix, 2, 24, 116–19, 121, 133–36, 137–38. See also revival

F  163

Slavs, 26, 35, 37, 96; in Greece, 127; oppression, 41, 44, 44n3; unity of, 26 Slovenia, 16n6, 16n7, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 61, 65, 87, 125–26. See also Yugoslavia Smith, David, 102 Smlatić, Sulejman, 26, 44n4 Social Democratic Alliance (Union) of Macedonia, 116, 134. See also party socialism, 2, 7–9, 20, 21, 25, 27–28, 31, 33–34, 36, 38, 50–52, 58–60, 67–69, 92, 93, 95, 102–5, 108–9, 111, 116, 128, 134, 137, 145. See also capitalism, communism, ideology, Marxism, postsocialist, society society, 8, 15, 24, 40, 52, 67, 75, 116, 138; Albanian, 89n4; Macedonian, 86, 88; socialist, 25, 31, 51. See also class, gender, relations Sokolana, 101. See also Kumanovo Sokolovski, Metodija, 44n4 Solana, Javier, 130. See also European Union, NATO South Africa, 61, 146. See also Africa Soviet Union, 8, 10, 12, 27–28, 35–36, 38, 70n6, 73, 109. See also communism, Russia, socialism, Ukraine space, 3–5, 9, 10, 12, 51, 60, 65, 67–69, 92, 94–95, 100, 105–12, 115, 129, 136, 144, 145, 150n2; division of, ; public, 110, 115, 128; social, 13, 68, 112; urban, 68, 108, 111. See also spatial Spain, 109 spatial: configuration, 51, 58, 68, 104–5, 109, 116; origin, 92, 94, 95; proximity, 57, 88; ruptures, 92 Stalin, Joseph, 27, 28, 36; post-Stalin period, 8; Tito-Stalin split, 35, 128 Star of Vergina, 127, 128, 129. See also Alexander the Great, flag, Philip II of Macedon St. Dimitrija, 128. See also church Stefanovska, Valentina, 120, 122. See also Warrior on the Horse Stitzel, Judd, 8 St. Mina, 136. See also church St. Nicholas, 97, 98, 113n5. See also church Stoianović, Traian, 25, 40 Stoller, Paul, 21

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F Index

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Stone, Gregory, 147 structure, 6, 15, 84, 85, 110, 119; economic, vii; infra-, 93, 105, 110 Struga, 1, 3, 40, 88, 121, 132, 145. See also Barok struggle, 7, 11, 39, 95, 119, 127, 130, 138; antifascist, 27; financial, 8, 31; minority, 41, 43, 76, 85, 87; social, 41, 73, 83, 86–87; for survival, 50, 56–57, 68 subjectivity, 2–3, 9, 11, 16n8, 115, 150n3. See also psychoanalysis Sugerman, Jane, 44n2 Sulejmani, Fadil, 80, 130 Sullivan, Stacy, 41, 42 sunet (sünnet), 22, 23. See also tradition state, the, 2, 110, 112, 117, 131, 137–38, 139n4 Sveta Trojca, 99. See also church Sweden, 30, 109 Switzerland, 22, 42, 53, 56 Szelenyi, Ivan, 51, 70n4, 105 Tanzania, 5 Tapinc, Huseyin, 76 taste, 2, 3, 14, 58, 66, 68, 107 Taussig, Michael, 111 tension, 13, 61, 86–87, 95, 133, 136; ethnic, 12–13, 30–31, 109, 133; ethnonational, 2, 4–5, 9, 24, 129, 132; political, 30–32, 94; social, 89n7. See also ethnicity, ethonationalism Tetovo, 3, 81, 88, 89n4, 130; Gostivar and, 44n1; and Kumanovo, 39; University, 21, 77, 80–82, 130, 134. See also kale Thiessen, Ilka, 70n2 things, 61, 65, 147; and objects, vii; people and, 5. See also artifacts, commodities, goods, object, products Third World, 105, 149 threat, 3, 5, 13–15, 26, 33, 40, 43, 56, 61, 69, 83, 86, 125. See also anxiety, danger, fear, psychoanalysis time, 1, 14, 45n11, 78–79, 84, 94, 107, 136, 144, 150n2; of liberation, 33; Ottoman, 89n5, 99, 126, 133; past, 95, 110; present, vii, 69, 111; socialist, 20, 52, 54–56, 108. See also discontinuity, period

Tito, Josip Broz, 27–31, 33, 35–38, 43, 45n10, 45n13, 111, 128 Todorova, Maria, 16n4 topography, 100; of spatial and temporal ruptures, 92 Toroman, Marija M., 30 tradition, 54, 55, 56, 84, 89n5; Albanian, 56, 81, 84; modernity and, 86, 87; traditional, 67, 73, 74, 79, 81, 83, 87, 93, 94, 95, 100, 101, 106, 140n10. See also dowry, engagement, feud, honor, marriage, Muslim, sunet, vendetta, wedding trafficking: drug, 43; of women, 75. See also prostitution Trajkovski, Boris, 139n2 Trajkovski, Petar, 70n3 trauma, 12, 60, 87, 115. See also psychoanalysis travel, 28–30, 33, 54, 55, 62, 74. See also passport, visa Trifunovski, Jovan F., 40, 70n3, 97 Tsitselikis, Kostas, 127 Turkey, 22, 25, 26, 28, 39, 44n5, 44n7, 45n10, 51, 55, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 89n5, 94–101, 103–4, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112n1, 112n4, 132. See also culture, emigration, Ottoman, rich, Turks Turks, 26, 28, 34, 62, 96–98, 106, 112n4, 127. See also Turkey Ukraine, 62. See also Soviet Union United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), 146 United Nations (UN), 16n6, 23, 80, 89n2, 129. See also America, EU, NATO United States of America, 11, 12, 21, 22, 28, 31, 32, 41–42, 109, 140n11 unity. See brotherhood and unity Uplisashvili, Anna, 149 Urbanek, Katarina, 145 urbanization, 21, 25, 67, 94, 102. See also space urban planning, 22, 39, 100, 102, 110, 113n7, 121. See also Skopje, space Urošević, Atanasie, 95, 96, 97, 99,100, 102, 112n1, 112n2, 113n5

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest

Index

Copyright © 2013. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Valian, Virginia, 86 Vardar: dialect, 128; Macedonia, 100; river, 109, 116, 117–19, 121, 139n4, 145; Valley, 96 Vejvoda, Ivan, 126 Veles, 96, 99, 100 vendetta, 39, 77, 79. See also feud Venturini, Alessandra, 21 Verdery, Katherine, 7, 89n7, 150n2 Vergina Sun. See Star of Vergina Vidoeski, Božidar, 96 visa, 32. See also passport, travel visibility, 20, 23, 33, 39, 101, 102, 107; of power, 2; visible, vii, 13, 14, 52, 57, 58, 61, 67, 69, 84, 92, 95, 98, 105, 108, 110, 148. See also “invisibility” Vlachs, 96, 97, 100, 127. See also Aromanians, language VMRO, 119; -DPMNE, 2, 15n1, 116– 17, 121, 122, 125, 129, 133–34, 139n2; -Narodna, 139n2. See also doctrine, lions, party, postsocialist Vnatrešna makedonska revolucionerna organizacija – Demokratska partija za makedonsko nacionalno edinstvo. See VMRO Voice of the People. See Zëri i Popullit Vojvodina, 88n1 Vullnetari, Julie, 44n2 Waal, Clarissa De, 79 Waetjen, Thembisa, 84 “War on Terror”, 11 Warrior on the Horse, 122, 123, 124, 125, 128. See also Alexander the Great, “Skopje 2014” wealth, 1–2, 14, 21, 25, 34, 43, 50, 51–52, 61, 62, 65, 68–69, 83, 93, 100, 107–8, 112, 115, 145, 149; Albanians, 13, 62, 112; display of, 58, 108; new(found), 13, 14, 50; Russians, 7; sense of, 3; uneven distribution of, 25. See also nouveaux riches, rich wedding, 22, 23, 62, 63, 66, 67; banquet,

F 165

66. See also dowry, engagement, marriage, tradition west. See commodities, Europe, Germany, goods, lifestyle, Macedonia women, 39, 56, 58, 65, 74–88, 89n3–4, 89n7, 98, 103, 106, 108; Albanian, 15, 74, 76, 78–81, 86–88, 106; German, 74; Macedonian, 51, 59. See also emancipation, empowerment, gender, masculinity, men, prostitution, sexuality, trafficking wood, 58, 63, 64; carved, 1, 58. See also furniture Woodhead, David, 76 Woodward, Susan L, 25, 70n5, 126 World War I, 26, 34, 40, 97, 100, 101, 127 World War II, 17n10, 25–27, 33, 36, 89n5, 97, 98, 101–4, 110 Xaferi, Arben, 80 Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 85 Yugoslavia, 3–17, 20–46, 73, 102–12; dissolution of, 4, 8, 20, 32, 40, 55, 105, 125; Kingdom of, 22, 26, 33, 34, 73, 94, 95, 100; memories of, 55, 56; socialist, 8, 10, 20–22, 25–26, 33, 43, 56, 94, 103, 112n2; Yugoslav Federation, 4, 8, 12, 26–28, 31–34, 37–38, 43, 45n13, 57, 58, 73, 79, 112n2, 126, 128. See army, Croatia, economy, history, Macedonia, minority, party, relations, Serbia, Slovenia Yuval-Davis, Nira, 85 Zambeta, Evie, 73 Žarkov, Dubravka, 89n6 Zëri i Popullit, 35, 37, 38, 45n10, 45n12, 45n13, 46n14 Živković, Marko, 89n6 Žižek, Slavoj, 11, 15, 70n7, 147 “7”, 106 9/11, 11–12. See also period

Ethno-Baroque : Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest