View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kent Academic Repository The neoliberal katastrofa: privatisation, development and a changing economy in Macedonia’s Tikveš wine region Justin M. Otten Doctoral Thesis Supervised by Glenn Bowman School of Anthropology & Conservation University of Kent, Canterbury 2015 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………..………..............................3 Acknowledgements…………………..…………………................................5 Preface……………………………………………..………............................7 A note about the Macedonian language………..…………………………...10 Introduction………………………………………………………………....11 Chapter 1 Timeless Tikveš: an anthropology of the region’s people, land and life…………………………………………………………………………..48 Chapter 2 Deconstructing katastrofa: neoliberalism, privatisation and the precarious transition in Macedonia…………………………………………77 Chapter 3 In vino veritas: Tikveš grape and wine production in the 20th century and after…………………………………………………….............96 Chapter 4 Authority, wine mafia and the thieving state: tension and power at the crossroads of neoliberalism and democracy in 21st century Macedonia…………………………………………………………………129 Chapter 5 Utopia Europa? The CAP, IPARD and development in Macedonia…………………………………………………………………159 Chapter 6 ‘Not living, just surviving’: calling upon entrepreneurship, empathy and connections in coping with the crisis and growing inequality…..................................................................................................187 Conclusion……………………………………………………....................216 Bibliography…………………………………………………….................239 Appendices………………………………………………………........250-255 Appendix I—Research Questions Appendix II—Maps 3 ABSTRACT This thesis draws upon anthropological fieldwork carried out in 2010–11 in the Tikveš wine region of the Republic of Macedonia. Unlike most other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, Macedonia’s post-socialist transition was held off due to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The result is that a slower, more subtle shift has occurred there yet it has been one guided by neoliberal principles, thus significantly altering the livelihoods of the country’s inhabitants. My research in Tikveš illustrates the role privatisation (privatizacija, a term known and used locally) is playing in the region’s transition from government to private ownership and production, specifically in the wine industry. Although the quality and selection of wine in Tikveš has improved, the lives of the independent grape growers and their families have not. Instead, the growers have been subject to the leverage of the winery owners—who have reduced and delayed payments to them—while a neoliberalised government has taken a laissez-faire approach to market regulation. Combined with EU accession development policy, this thesis therefore focuses on how individuals in the region are both protesting and adapting to the change at hand through rearranging their livelihoods and work. Indeed, grape growers have been left with a surplus of grapes and a dearth of income and certainty, inciting some to produce vast quantities of homemade rakija (brandy) while others replace, abandon or sell their vineyards. New ways of bringing in income, such as selling one’s brandy, produce or homemade goods are also modes of survival. Yet many claim that is all they are doing, merely ‘surviving, not living’. An argument is thus made that there is a return to the peasantry. Such repeasantisation is a process whereby the focus of economic activity becomes further centred on households and the pooling of family resources drawn from working the land and engaging in non-professional types of work. This form of repeasantisation is essentially that increasing numbers of individuals are not only working their small plots of land to provide produce for their family and for sale, but that in replacing the employment and income once provide by the state they are engaging in petty trade and precarious employment when it can be found. The thesis is comprised of six chapters, with an introduction and conclusion as well. (KEY WORDS: post-socialism, transition, privatisation, development, neoliberalism, former Yugoslavia, Macedonia) 4 Dedicated to all of the acquaintances, friends and family in Macedonia who, through their support, insight and experience, made the contents herein possible. 5 ACKNOWLEDEGEMENTS This thesis has been long in the making. My initial interest in a doctorate came about in 2008, when I returned to live (after serving there in the Peace Corps) and marry in Macedonia. Although my initial thoughts and interest were in continuing with my MA research on ethno-nationalism, marriage to my wife, Irena, in December 2008 and frequent visits to her hometown meant that I changed my research focus prior to evening beginning my project. That is, not long into 2009 I realised the severity of the agrarian transition occurring in my wife’s home region, Tikveš. I would therefore firstly like to thank my supervisor, Glenn Bowman, who admitted me to Kent to supervise one topic, but then ended up with an entirely different one on his hands. I would like to thank him for this, as well as his advice and patience in what has been a lengthy project and fieldwork research write-up. I would also like to thank my wife, Irena, for her suggestions prior to and during my fieldwork, and unquestioning support of me throughout this lengthy process. I dragged her to reside in England twice for doctoral obligations, and then moved us to the US in 2012 to continue with my academic work, research and writing. I thank her because hardly a word of complaint have I ever heard from her. In fact, she along with our daughter Vera (born during my fieldwork), have been enthusiastic for the adventure that being an anthropologist brings, even if it has meant a lack of stability and financial security at times. Financially speaking, I must therefore thank the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent for their bestowing upon me a Graduate Teaching Assistantship, and to American Councils for their awarding me a Title VIII doctoral research grant for the bulk of my fieldwork in 2011. Without this funding the continuation of my doctorate would not have been possible. There are many individuals who have given me not only sound feedback and thoughts on my research, but general advice as well. In the UK and Europe these include Daniela Peluso, who has been a friend and mentor; David Henig, who gave me the wise advice to write my thesis through conference and journal papers; Dimitrios Thessolopoulos and the feedback 6 received in his graduate research seminars as well as thesis examination; Deema Kaneff, who provided the most extensive feedback on my entire thesis, given her role as my external examiner; Michael Costello and Oana Ivan, among other ‘SACians’ who provided a sense of camaraderie and intellectual stimulation during my residence in Canterbury, including Friday night pub outings. I would also like to thank Chris Hann, for welcoming and accommodating me at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in July 2010, and providing early theoretical guidance then and throughout with his own research. In the US, I would like to thank many scholars, but primarily Richard Wilk and Eduardo Brondizio at Indiana University, the former introducing me into the world of Food Studies he oversees, and the latter having brought me back to IU as a Research Associate with the Department of Anthropology in 2012; Croatian language classmate and fellow anthropology doctoral student Heather Meiers, who provided initial feedback and many thoughts and conversations in summer 2012; the organisers of the Soyuz and Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) conferences, as well as those who accepted my papers for their panels at the last two AAA meetings in 2012 and 2013, and the many individuals I met at such events. In particular, these include John Borneman, Diana Mincyte, Yuson Jung, Ronan Hervouet, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Peter Larsen, among others. I would also like to thank those who edited or provided significant feedback on various papers, including Laura Thompson and Jessica Hardin (Student Anthropologist), as well as Andrew Asher (Anthropology of East Europe Review). Last but not least, as written in my dedication, this thesis and the information and experience relayed within it would not have been possible without the gracious hospitality provided by my wife’s family, and the neighbours, friends, informant-interlocutors and random acquaintances I met throughout my fieldwork in Tikveš. Their thoughts and experiences helped re-shape my understanding of their shifting conditions, plight and thus my project, and for this I am eternally grateful and forever changed. 7 PREFACE I’ve often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it. –Clifford Geertz I call upon this quote in order to strengthen the case for the style of narrative ethnography which follows in this thesis. I call upon minimal theory in it, instead relaying the subjective experiences of not only my informants but myself. This exercise in reflexivity comes from my insider-outsider perspectives, which at times complement and at other times clash with each other. That said, the testimonies in this work are but a fraction of those I heard, observed and sensed while in the field. They come from some 500 pages of largely typed field-notes,