Studying the Post-Socialist City in Yugoslavia: An Examination of Multi-Disciplinary Methodologies and Theoretical Approaches

• Authors: Maja Babić

Title variants

PL

Badanie przestrzeni miasta postsocjalistycznego na obszarze byłej Jugosławii: analiza wielodyscyplinowych metodologii i perspektyw teoretycznych

Abstracts

PL

Od upadku ładu komunistycznego w Europie na początku lat 90. XX wieku, czemu towarzyszył rozpad Jugosławii i wojna, która naznaczyła ostatnią dekadę minionego stulecia na Bałkanach, intensywnie rozwijają się badania naukowe poświęcone Europie Południowo-Wschodniej. Od początku nowego tysiąclecia pojawiają się projekty akademickie dotyczące dwudziestowiecznej architektury, zaś nowe pokolenie historyków architektury i urbanistyki z rosnącym zainteresowaniem rozwija poruszaną dotąd tematykę. Jednakże badania nad architekturą okresu postsocjalistycznego w miastach zachodnich Bałkanów odgrywają drugorzędną rolę w porównaniu z aktywnością naukową poświęconą architekturze modernizmu w Jugosławii, jak też miejscu architektury w przemianach społeczno-politycznych podczas zimnej wojny. Badania przestrzeni miejskiej w okresie postsocjalistycznym zajmują marginalne miejsce w dyskursie historii architektury i urbanistyki, zaś projekty naukowe o tej tematyce rozwijają się głównie w perspektywie socjologii, antropologii społecznej i geografii miasta. Celem artykułu jest analiza dotychczasowej literatury dotyczącej architektury postsocjalistycznej oraz miejskiego, ideologicznego i socjologicznego dziedzictwa socjalistycznej Jugosławii; przedstawione przeze mnie prace starają się również określić możliwe kierunki dalszych studiów nad tą problematyką. Uważam, że analiza wielodyscyplinowych badań naukowych dotyczących architektury socjalizmu i okresu post-socjalistycznego może być kluczowym krokiem w procesie odkrywania znaczeń jugosłowiańskiej i postjugosłowiańskiej przestrzeni miejskiej, jak też w próbach scharakteryzowania jej specyfiki. Pod względem metodologicznym artykuł rekonstruuje sposoby badania typowe dla poszczególnych dyscyplin oraz ich punkty wspólne, jak też dokonuje analizy istniejącego już dyskursu naukowego. Ponadto dzięki badaniu różnorodnych perspektyw metodologicznych i teoretycznych w studiach na temat miast Europy Środkowej w artykule zaproponowano możliwe kierunki dalszych prac badawczych nad architekturą i urbanistyką okresu postsocjalistycznego w krajach byłej Jugosławii.

EN

Since the end of the state-socialist era in the early 1990s – and effectively, since the end of the Yugoslav federation and the subsequent wars that had engulfed the Western Balkans for almost a decade – the study of the twentieth-century South-Eastern Europe has intensified. The scholarship on the region’s twentieth-century architecture has been prolific since the early years of the new millennium, and the new generation of urban and architectural scholars has further amplified this trend. However, an inquiry into the post-socialist city in Western Balkans has been relegated largely to the secondary position to the study of the Yugoslav modernist architecture and its role within the socio-political mechanisms of the Cold War era. In this discourse, the study of the post-socialist urban space remains lacking in architectural and urban history – it is mainly conducted within the methodological and theoretical frameworks of sociology, socio-cultural anthropology, and urban geography. To bridge this scholarly gap and identify possible new trajectories of inquiry, I probe into the different scholarship dealing with the post-socialist city and the urban, ideological, and social remnants of the state-socialist era in former Yugoslavia. I argue that the study of the multi-disciplinary nature of the scholarship examining the state-socialist and post-socialist city serves as a vital step in the more comprehensive understanding of the (post-)Yugoslav architectural space, its particulars, and idiosyncrasies. Methodologically, I identify and outline the different disciplinary strands in the study of the post-socialist space in general, and post-Yugoslav space in particular, followed by an analysis of the established discourses and their points of interference and overlap. By investigating qualitative methodologies and different theoretical approaches in the study of the Central-East European and Yugoslav post-socialist city, I explore the post-socialist urban space in former Yugoslavia in a wide-ranging manner, ultimately identifying conduits for future research.

Keywords

PL

architektura socjalizmu; architektura postsocjalistyczna; Jugosławia; kraje byłej Jugosławii; ideologia i architektura; dziedzictwo kulturowe; Zachodnie Bałkany

EN

socialist city; post-socialist city; Yugoslavia; Yugoslav successor states; ideology and architecture; socio-cultural heritage; Western Balkans

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Slawistyki PAN
• Journal: Colloquia Humanistica
• Year: 2021
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 1-22

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Maja Babić

• Univerzita Karlova [Charles University], Prague

• https://orcid.org/0000000199287504

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Identifiers

DOI

10.11649/ch.2606

Biblioteka Nauki

31339668