The thermodynamics of “muljavine i pizdarije”: state, infrastructure and moral economy of district heating in Bor (Serbia) and Rijeka (Croatia)
“In this seminar I provided an anthropological perspective on how citizens in two post-Yugoslav industrial towns – Bor (Serbia) and Rijeka (Croatia) – encounter and negotiate district heating. I explored how moral economy and neoliberal discourses are embedded in people’s encounter with urban material infrastructure (e.g. pipes and manhole covers) and how the state becomes reinvigorated in such encounters. I used ethnographic material I collected in Bor (2012/2013) and a new material collected in Rijeka in order to discuss post-Yugoslav legacies and possibilities for political action/agency. ”
Deana Jovanović is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies of Southeastern Europe at the University of Rijeka. Deana holds a PhD in Social Anthropology (the University of Manchester), and she researches urban, political, and environmental anthropology. Her research focuses on anticipations of futures in deindustrialised and reindustrialised urban environments across East Europe.
