Paper short abstract:

I argue against understanding of consumption in postsocialist Europe as a simple political act and consumption of images of the West. I argue that certain ways of shopping serve as sources for the understanding of social life itself and as an important element for building the proper moral self.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I want to address the impact of cultural studies on understanding of consumption in European post-socialist countries that tend to apply specific understanding of 'choice' (in this case 'consumer choice') that is central to 'Western' ideologies of 'individualism' (see Strathern 1992). Thus, literature on consumption in postsocialist Europe tends to see consumption as a political act (in choosing between Western goods and their 'less sophisticated' Eastern European versions, to put it rather crudely). This has led some authors to conclude that consumerism in the socialist countries was actually consumption of images of the West. This makes people in Eastern Europe appear either as the victims of 'Western commodity fetishism' or as rebels against their socialist states (cf. the critique of Lampland 1995, which argues that 'commodity fetishism' was a consequence of socialism insomuch as it was also the consequence of capitalism). I argue that the situation in postsocialist Serbia is more complicated than these accounts suggest. I will offer an ethnographic study of the specific group of people with whom I worked in the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad, who were relatively young and whose identification strategies were directed towards 'cosmopolitan' practices. I will try to avoid the simple dichotomy between 'socialism' and 'capitalism', 'East' and 'West', while trying to understand how certain ways of shopping (but also certain styles of selling) serve simultaneously as sources for the understanding of social life itself and as an important element for building the proper moral self.