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The paper explores experiences of temporary labor migration that entailed Yugoslav export of know-how (highly skilled knowledge and expertise) between 1980 and 1991, a result of industrial collaboration between Mining and Smelting Combine Bor, a state-owned copper-processing 'giant' in former Yugoslavia, and the biggest copper company in Iran, National Iranian Copper Industries Company. Based on interviews with individuals engaged in the Yugoslav project, supplemented by analysis of documents and historic newspapers from that period, the paper analyzes everyday practices of managerial bureaucratic improvisations and improvisations at work. The article shows how such improvisations helped overcome excessive and rigid Yugoslav socialist bureaucracy and made Yugoslav entrepreneurial capitalist ventures possible. Moreover, it argues that the export of know-how was constitutive of silent acceptances of reproduction of capitalist relations, which helped consolidate the process of liberalization of the socialist market in the late 1980s. We argue that such temporary labor migration and the often improvised work carried out by the Yugoslav workers cannot be seen as a resistance or alternative to the Western/Northern hegemonies. Rather, we argue that such practices were facilitators of the capitalist ventures at semi-peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main question the article discusses is how and why feminism can reflect upon multiple differences in Serbia through the idea of solidarity in the discourse of facing the past. The article pays attention to the connection between feminist practices and theories, solidarity, and the idea about moral responsibility. The article opens discussion about (feminist) solidarity seen as a strategic notion and points out to the politics of exclusion/inclusion of multiple Others. Attention is devoted to gender categories and construction of differences, as well as to the potential possibility and the importance of reflecting upon solidarity with gender diversities. The latter are briefly depicted through research results of analysis of women’s memory narratives - nurses and antiwar activists - whose subjectivities, experiences and gender positions, in their interaction, influenced construction of their narratives, differences, but also their relationship with the past.

In this text the construction of national identity has been analyzed through the example of national tourism strategy in Serbia framed within the contemporary state's process of 'branding' the nation. Through the analysis of Marketing strategy and recently published tourist brochures designed for foreign tourists, the aim is to investigate the ways in which representation of a new national identity, utilized for consumption and selling to the Others, is constructed. The text points out to the perspectives of cultural management and strategic government of national representation as a way of repositioning the bad image of Serbia. The analysis shows that, rather than negative connotations that 'follow' the notion of balkanism, tourist reformulation leads to changed, but still ambiguous and undefined representation. In this text I point out to the aspect of branding - as marketing process which uses cultural recourses - that leads to pacification of the image. Seen as a strategic mean by which the stigma could be averted, the paper shows that this process does not offer a structural solution of the problem which represents the obstacle of Serbia's further development.

Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant political and economic systems, function alongside one another in contemporary cities. While infrastructures attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the "East" of Europe has still largely been left out, as the studies mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper, thus, takes on two challenges by intersecting an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. First, following calls from comparative urbanism and the postcolonial turn in urban studies and geography to work beyond usual suspects, the paper expands the territorial scope of infrastructure research. Second, the paper takes the critical edge of the aforementioned calls by offering new ways of attending to infrastructures through relations to the (socialist) past. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. Instead of centralising the present or the "Western" best practice, the paper investigates to what extent it is possible to take elements of the (socialist) past and develop them into forward‐looking measures. The paper shows the need to incorporate questions of social justice and equity – perspectives which were more central for infrastructural provision under socialism – into the ways in which infrastructures are planned, made, and used today. While infrastructures have attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the "East" of Europe has still largely been left out, as studies have mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper intersects an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the ‘work of hope’ in relation to air pollution and health hazards in Bor, a polluted copper-processing town in Eastern Serbia. The aim of this paper is to show the mutual imbrication of hope and risk by delineating how hope for a stable personal and communal future was anchored in the polluting company and the toxic substances it produced, which, in various ways, provided a sense of possibility and opportunity. I show how the work of hope demanded simultaneous weighing up, manoeuvring, accepting, and bargaining with risks that became an integral part of the work of hope in a social setting where the double bind of growth versus sustainability was deeply embedded. I argue that together, hope and risk were both framing devices for thinking about and living towards futures in a context of reindustrialisation and recent sudden economic flourishing in this post-socialist town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]