Making Transition, Remaking Workers
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Making transition, remaking workers Market and privatisation reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the case of Energoinvest (1988-2008) Submitted by Anna Calori to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History In December 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: … ……………………………………………………….. Abstract This thesis focuses on the social transformations that accompanied market and privatisation reforms in the late- and post-Yugoslav space. It argues that in the historical shift from state socialism to the post-Yugoslav economic system, it was not only work relations that changed, but with them, the very meaning of work, productivity, and property; as workers’ role in the workplace was remade, so was workers’ identity. Focussing on the case of a prominent Yugoslav exporting company (Energoinvest) – which was embedded in global trade and a non-aligned economic world for much of the socialist period – it shows that a key intent of market and privatisation reforms from the late 1980s to the early 2000s was the (re)shaping of workers’ identity. The thesis uses the space of the industrial workplace – as imagined by experts, organised by companies, and experienced and remade by workers – to provide a grounded case study to show how the reformulation of workers’ identity has played out over subsequent economic transitions. Drawing upon oral history interviews, archival, and workplace material, the thesis claims that the three waves of privatisation and market reforms in Bosnia (in 1989, in 1997, and in 2002) - from the ‘socialist path’ to liberalisation, to ‘ethno-neoliberal’ privatisation - were not simply imposed from outside by hegemonic forces of western liberal markets, but were also shaped by indigenous economic thoughts and practices. These different modes of reform and privatisation represent different moments of contestations – over the meaning of ‘work’, ‘worker’, ‘productivity’, ‘ownership’, ‘belonging’ - between and within workers, managers, experts, local politicians, the global market and the international community. This co-existence of overlapping models of reform created hybrid post-socialist identities, which in turn contributed to shaping economic reforms and their implementations in workplaces. By exploring the interactions between economic reform and identity-making, the thesis contributes to the fields of the global history of socialism, transition studies in Central- and South-Eastern Europe, labour and identity studies in socialist and post-socialist Yugoslavia, as well as post-conflict studies. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................ 2 Table of Contents ............................................................................................. 3 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 6 0.1 Literature review .................................................................................... 11 0.1.i Transition, market reforms, privatisation .......................................... 12 0.1.ii Identity, class, ethnicity ................................................................... 22 0.1.iii Workplaces, socialist globalisation, de-industrialisation ................. 32 0.2 Sources ................................................................................................. 35 0.2.i Multiplicity of voices ......................................................................... 37 0.2.ii Identity formation, remaking subjects .............................................. 47 0.2.iii Interactions between different groups ............................................ 57 0.3 Chapter Outline ..................................................................................... 59 I. Market reforms in Yugoslavia (1988-1990) ................................................ 64 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 64 1.2 The long road to reforms: Making and re-making the socialist worker .. 69 1.2.i Self management and the market: a complex equilibrium ............... 71 1.2.ii Private ownership and social ownership: reconciled in the Yugoslav model ....................................................................................................... 75 1.3. A non-aligned gaze: economists and the intellectual milieu of reforms 76 1.3.i Economists’ academic and intellectual background ........................ 79 1.3.ii The ‘Pioneers’: Economists’ self-confidence in approaching Eastern and Western reforms models ................................................................... 85 1.4. New Socialism and the critique of self-management ........................... 97 1.4.i Self-management, efficiency and ownership in the discussions at the Council of Yugoslav Economists ........................................................... 100 1.5. Privatisation and the remaking of workers ......................................... 104 1.6. Conclusions ........................................................................................ 122 II. The Impact of reforms in the workplace (1988-1991) ............................... 126 3 2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 126 2.2 The case study: rationale, opportunities and limitations ..................... 130 2.3 The workplace as a space of socialisation and internalisation of Yugoslavism .............................................................................................. 136 2.3.i A market-oriented and research-oriented company ....................... 137 2.3.ii Brotherhood and Unity, Yugoslavism and company identity ......... 146 2.4 The system is broken but can be fixed: Workers’ and Managers’ view of self-management ...................................................................................... 154 2.4.i Work and non-work ........................................................................ 156 2.4.ii Skills differences and wage distribution ........................................ 161 2.5 Workers’ shareholding, social ownership and the Marković reforms .. 164 2.5.i Managers as reformers .................................................................. 167 2.5.ii Workers’ views on shareholding: shaping reforms from the bottom- up ........................................................................................................... 172 2.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 183 III. Workers’ identity and the Bosnian conflict (1992-1996) .......................... 185 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 185 3.2 The descent into war: creeping nationalism and workers’ anti-nationalist stand ......................................................................................................... 189 3.3 Workers-warriors and the fracturing of workplaces ............................. 200 3.4 Re-employment, discrimination and the ethnicisation of workplaces .. 215 3.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 232 IV. Ethnic privatisation: post-war reforms and the (re)making of ethnic workplaces (1996-1999) ............................................................................... 234 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 234 4.2 Post-war privatisation: between socialist legacy and new bottom-up pressures .................................................................................................. 237 4.2.i Socialist legacy .............................................................................. 238 4.2.ii Privatisation as the right of workers-warriors-veterans ................. 248 4.3 Ethnic Privatisation .............................................................................. 258 4.4 Workers-warriors-veterans: imagined privatisation and disappointing results ........................................................................................................ 266 4.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 275 4 V. ‘Neoliberal’ privatisation and the fragmentation of workplaces (2000-2008) ...................................................................................................................... 277 5.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 277 5.2 Neoliberalism as a solution to ‘nationalist’ and ‘communist’ legacy .... 282 5.3 Local responses to privatisation: the issue of employment ................. 296 5.4 Privatisation and restructuring of Energoinvest ................................... 303 5.5 Experts, managers and the legacy of a socialist corporate culture ..... 310 5.6 ‘Once we were something, now we are nothing’: Workers’ narratives between shareholding and exclusion .......................................................