engleski

Retro-Utopia. On the Idea of Work and Progress in Post-Socialist Croatia

This article aims at exploring narratives on work and progress in post-socialist Croatia in the light of the retro-Utopia. By drawing on archival, socialist labour newspapers, and longitudinal research on unemployment in the post-industrial town of Sisak, Croatia, we will focus on how workers have been narrativizing work, progress, and their well-being over a broad time span of more than 60 years. In addressing these narratives, we will use the concept of retro-Utopia and show its ability to cover nostalgic revalorization of lost times, as well as to offer promissory imaginary directed toward the future. In this article, we argue that Utopian narratives on work, progress and well-being have changed from community-based ideas in socialism to be constructed anew in the last twenty years as retro-Utopian concepts deploying a past-based nostalgic revalorization of socialism and future-based Utopianism connected to the Croatian accession to the EU.

retro-utopia; post-socialism; Croatia; work

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