Political Boundaries, Consumption and Cultural Capital: Cross-Border Shopping in Post-socialist Slovenia

Authors

  • Polona Sitar Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, ZRC SAZU (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)

Keywords:

Cross-Border Shopping, (Post)socialism, Gender, Reconfiguration of Borders, EU

Abstract

The contribution deals with a cultural memory and a tourism in the case of cross-border shopping in Slovenia, a former socialist republic of Yugoslavia. It points out the special position that Slovenia had with its geographical location while sharing borders with Austria and Italia by analysing narratives of informants, born before WW2. The contribution examines cross-border shopping to “Western” capitalistic countries in the period between mid-1960s and late 1980s, since in the mid-1960s Yugoslavia opened up towards the West, and in the period after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. The contribution makes an important distinction between “shopping tourism” and “leisure tourism”, since Yugoslav citizens travelled abroad in large numbers for both recreation and shopping. The article places reasons for cross-border shopping into a wider context of socialist economy. Also, a detailed description of shopping practices with an emphasis on gender division is given and the discussion of the perception of people on cross-border shopping in the context ofpolitical implications of the historical changes and processes of de- and re-bordering in (post)socialist Yugoslavia.

Author Biography

Polona Sitar, Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, ZRC SAZU (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)

Polona Sitar is ethnologist, cultural anthropologist and communicologist. Currently she is a PhD student in the department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana and she is working as a young researcher at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art. Her research focuses on socio-historical aspects of everyday life of Slovenian women in socialism through the aspects of consumption.    

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Published

2016-05-03

How to Cite

Sitar, P. (2016). Political Boundaries, Consumption and Cultural Capital: Cross-Border Shopping in Post-socialist Slovenia. International Journal of Contemporary Economics and Administrative Sciences, 6(SI), 87–104. Retrieved from http://ijceas.com/index.php/ijceas/article/view/106

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Articles