engleski

The Scientific Community: Creating a Language to Deal with the 'Everyday Geopolitics' of Neoliberal 'Transition' in Post-Socialist Serbia

In this article, I focus on the ways in which a particular group of people – astrophysicists in Belgrade, Serbia, alongside whom I conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork in 2008 and 2009 – responded to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I argue that the conditions and effects of neoliberalising processes occurring in economic centres of the global world system affected scientists in Serbia before neoliberal modes of governmentality surfaced in this state. I pay particular attention to a trope I often came across, namely the reference to a supranational ‘scientific community’. I consider how this term was mobilised with reference to the context of scientific and economic isolation during a portion of the 1990s, when a trade embargo and sanctions preventing formal international collaborations shaped scientists’ everyday experiences. Yet, I argue, isolation also reflected the uneven distribution of opportunities for scientific endeavours emerging out of global neoliberalisation processes and resistance to them. Opportunities reached scientists in various parts of the former Yugoslavia at different speeds, a situation that was experienced as a hindrance for many scientists committed to living and working in the region. It is against this historical backdrop of isolation that I suggest scientists began to invoke their belonging to a supranational ‘scientific community’.

post-socialism ; astrophysics ; Serbia

Ovaj članak razmatra načine na koje je specifična skupina ljudi – astrofizičari iz Beograda (Srbija) s kojima je autor jednu godinu radio na terenu 2008. i 2009. godine – reagirala na raspad SFRJ-a. Autor tvrdi da su uvjeti i posljedice neoliberalnih procesa, do kojih je došlo u ekonomskim središtima globalnog svjetskog sustava, utjecali na znanstvenike u Srbiji prije uvođenja neoliberalnih oblika upravljanja. Posebna se pozornost posvećuje frazi s kojom se autor često susretao, odnosno upućivanju na supranacionalnu „znanstvenu zajednicuˮ. Razmatra se upotreba te fraze s obzirom na kontekst znanstvene i gospodarske izolacije u jednom dijelu devedesetih kada su trgovinski embargo i sankcije, koje su sprečavale formalnu međunarodnu suradnju, oblikovali svakidašnja iskustava znanstvenika. Međutim, tvrdi se da se izolacija također odrazila u neravnomjernoj raspodjeli prilika za bavljenje znanstvenim radom zbog globalnih procesa neoliberalizacije i otpora protiv njih. Znanstvenicima su se u različitim dijelovima Jugoslavije pružale prilike različitom brzinom, a mnogi su znanstvenici koji su živjeli i radili u bivšoj Jugoslaviji tu situaciju doživljavali kao p