Paper Short Abstract:

By analyzing the case of the Agricultural Combine Belgrade in socialist Yugoslavia, I argue that the triadic relationship of working people, material constraints, and the landscape was central in attempts to shape social relations and subjectivity in socialism.

Paper Abstract:

The Agricultural Combine Belgrade (ACB) was a major food producer in socialist Yugoslavia, located in the Pančevo Marshes in the Belgrade metropolitan area. ACB’s growth and development, which combined utilitarian goals (rapidly growing industrial food production) and broader political goals (transforming Yugoslav workers into true socialist self-managing subjects), had profound consequences for human-environment relations in the Pančevo Marshes, a wetland area that was undergoing a profound infrastructural transformation in this period. In this paper, I discuss a gradual shift in emphasis on different aspects of development planning in the Marshes by identifying three periods. In the early days of ACB, the relationship toward the environment emphasized the struggle to overcome “natural” aspects of the sparsely inhabited and inhospitable area. It was being transformed through the labor of workers using extremely limited means of production and who were supposed to be reshaped through their work. Later, the built environment became more important in that relationship, as the workers grew their company and their own standard of living within particular financial constraints. Finally, the idea of an environment that was managed and beautified through the residents’ labor in ACB and in their neighborhoods became prevalent. This case shows that the triadic relationship of working people, material constraints, and the landscape was central in attempts to shape social relations and subjectivity in socialism.