Overview

Engineering Global Socialism chronicles the journey of the Bosnian global corporation Energoinvest and its workers from its Yugoslav socialist ideals through decades of dissolution, reconstruction, and post-socialist transformation. Author Anna Calori provides a company-centric window into the business history of socialist globalization during periods of national development, destruction, and rebuilding. Contrary to popular perceptions of ""centralized"" socialist states, Energoinvest actively shaped trade relations with the Global South, driven by a socialist corporate culture that encouraged competition as well as collective decision-making. Even after Yugoslavia's disintegration in 1992 ended its dreams of a socialist path to globalization, these core characteristics shaped Energoinvest's adaptation to capitalist transformations and made it a key player in the struggle for Bosnia's post-war economic reconstruction. Through oral histories and archival research, Calori reveals how Energoinvest's workers paired the promise of a new model of global integration with their own visions of a working world in which they set the rules of engagement – and how, upon its sale to mostly foreign owners, the marginalization and ethnic homogenization of employee shareholders mirrored changes around citizenship in Bosnia. Now, in the twenty-first century, Energoinvest offers new promises of a post-industrial future, but its often hazy parameters leave workers to rely on the memory of ""what could have been"" to make sense of change. Tracing the long trajectory of a Yugoslav enterprise through decades of large-scale social change, Engineering Global Socialism presents a historical and sociological moment in which workers' ideas about social and corporate enterprise offered the possibility of a more democratic path to globalization.

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9780253075086

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Reviews

""Engineering Global Socialism challenges readers to perceive continuities between the years of late socialist Yugoslavia, the years of immediate postwar reconstruction, and the ostensibly more forward-looking reforms of the early twenty-first century by incorporating reforms associated with all these periods into its framework and by encouraging readers to thus challenge the 'narratives of transition as (neo)liberal convergence' towards a social-financial 'end of history.' The nonlinearity of Calori's theory of transition is sophisticated and brings a state-of-the-art understanding of how 'transition' is now being understood by critical specialists on to its empirical material.""—Catherine Baker, author of Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial? ""The story of Energoinvest is the story of Bosnia and Yugoslavia in miniature. The text evokes so much productive thinking for myself as well. I really enjoyed the discussion of socialist corporate culture, ethno-nationalistic privatization and neoliberalism (brilliant!), the deindustrialization literature, the socialist good life, the 'portal to their imagined futures' and the resilience of the 'global socialist ecumene,' and concretely showing us the changes and continuities across 1989. The beginnings of each chapter and the transitions are so fascinating to read and wonderfully tied to the current concerns. I am so excited about this book.""—Johanna Bockman, author of Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism ""Anna Calori's compelling analysis traces the fall of socialist Yugoslavia and its multiethnic core, Bosnia-Herzegovina, through the lens of one of its economic giants: Energoinvest. The firm's collapse is masterfully retold through the voices of blue-collar workers and managers who once believed in the promise of a global socialist state embedded in the market economy.""—Chiara Bonfiglioli, author of Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector

""Engineering Global Socialism challenges readers to perceive continuities between the years of late socialist Yugoslavia, the years of immediate postwar reconstruction, and the ostensibly more forward-looking reforms of the early twenty-first century by incorporating reforms associated with all these periods into its framework and by encouraging readers to thus challenge the 'narratives of transition as (neo)liberal convergence' towards a social-financial 'end of history.' The nonlinearity of Calori's theory of transition is sophisticated and brings a state-of-the-art understanding of how 'transition' is now being understood by critical specialists on to its empirical material.""—Catherine Baker, author of Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial? ""The story of Energoinvest is the story of Bosnia and Yugoslavia in miniature. The text evokes so much productive thinking for myself as well. I really enjoyed the discussion of socialist corporate culture, ethno-nationalistic privatization and neoliberalism (brilliant!), the deindustrialization literature, the socialist good life, the 'portal to their imagined futures' and the resilience of the 'global socialist ecumene,' and concretely showing us the changes and continuities across 1989. The beginnings of each chapter and the transitions are so fascinating to read and wonderfully tied to the current concerns. I am so excited about this book.""—Johanna Bockman, author of Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism

""The Socialist Global Promise challenges readers to perceive continuities between the years of late socialist Yugoslavia, the years of immediate postwar reconstruction, and the ostensibly more forward-looking reforms of the early twenty-first century by incorporating reforms associated with all these periods into its framework and by encouraging readers to thus challenge the 'narratives of transition as (neo)liberal convergence' towards a social-financial 'end of history.' The nonlinearity of Calori's theory of transition is sophisticated and brings a state-of-the-art understanding of how 'transition' is now being understood by critical specialists on to its empirical material.""—Catherine Baker, author of Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial? ""The story of Energoinvest is the story of Bosnia and Yugoslavia in miniature. The text evokes so much productive thinking for myself as well. I really enjoyed the discussion of socialist corporate culture, ethno-nationalistic privatization and neoliberalism (brilliant!), the deindustrialization literature, the socialist good life, the 'portal to their imagined futures' and the resilience of the 'global socialist ecumene,' and concretely showing us the changes and continuities across 1989. The beginnings of each chapter and the transitions are so fascinating to read and wonderfully tied to the current concerns. I am so excited about this book.""—Johanna Bockman, author of Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism

Author Information

Anna Calori is Lecturer in Contemporary Economic History at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow.

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