Dunja Njaradi

This research project will explore affective dimensions of economic transformation through local paradigms of precarity in Serbia. Through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the project will chart narratives and practices of hope, morality and common good in the state-owned, working-class, folk dance society in Subotica. With massive layoffs and privatization of its assets, this once successful and prosperous society in socialist Yugoslavia now faces a serious financial and existential crisis – a crisis that creates new kinds of relationships between dancers and the state that Muehlebach calls ‘ethical citizenship’ in neoliberal era (2012). These affective relationships tend to focus on the ideas of personal responsibility, active citizenship and the power of cultural work in the midst of austerity measures and precarity. Another important focal point of the research is the focus on dance and dancing bodies and the way they help us understand precarity and ethical endurance in late capitalism (Povinelli 2011).