Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates conditions and dynamics of transformation of precarity in a part of service sector, that is, hospitality sector - precisely, kafana (taverns with live folk music) in Serbia from a gendered perspective.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates conditions and dynamics of transformation of precariousness in a part of service sector, that is, hospitality sector - precisely, kafana (taverns with live folk music) in Serbia from a gendered perspective. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork and narrative interviews with male and female kafana musicians in Belgrade, Šabac and surrounding, it aims to show that transformations of socio-economic paradigm had profound consequences for the workers in this sector as well, gender regimes included. However, as opposed to factory workers who are most often at the focus of postsocialist studies, life and work arrangements of these workers in socialist times corresponded to what we nowadays call precarious as well. Namely, music market and hospitality sectors were pioneers in establishing market relations, or introducing capitalism, in socialist Yugoslavia, and life-work arrangements of musicians were flexible in socialism too, so for them socio-economic changes of the last decades are not necessarily discontinuous. Rather than discussing whether precariousness was an inherent feature of some life-work arrangements in socialism as well, a consequence of transformations towards "market socialism", or a capitalist intrusion, I will explore which temporalities shape the narratives of these workers, and if these temporalities correspond to the milestones that scholars usually identify as crucial points of postsocialist transformation. I will also tackle the affective background of their narratives and experiences, that they usually express through songs they perform at work on customers' demand, and how the modification of the customers' affects meets their own.