Consumer culture from socialist Yugoslavia to post-socialist Serbia: movements and moments

Abstract

Widespread narratives on consumption mostly connect it with capitalism and (Western) modernity. That is the main reason why most of the scholarly and popular writings on the consumer culture and consumption practices after the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the context of post-socialist transformation tend to paint the process as a discovery, wherein former socialist subjects learn how to consume in new, Western, individualistic, materialistic and hedonistic ways. The intention of this chapter is to engage in a different perspective, keeping an eye on the development of consumer culture from its beginnings in the mid 1950s socialist Yugoslavia to post-socialist Serbia until the present. I will trace the most important movements and decisive moments affecting the changes and transformations of consumer culture in post-socialist period, arguing that consumer culture should be understood as a process, whose current manifestations always develop in longer time frames, and are embedded in local historical, political, social, economic and cultural contexts.