Back in the Yugosphere

I recently read an Economist article about the thriving “Yugosphere” of trade—commerce minus the ethno-nationalism. Money does make the world go round, but whether post-Yugoslav business has gotten so good as to put aside the 1990s and before, I’m reluctant to believe. Regardless, I like the term and notions of spheres. For unlike the square cut states of the US (admittedly not all) and our predisposition to like things boxy, the notion of overlapping circles of people, society, influence, are much more applicable to the real world. Well, here in the Balkans at least.

Back in Macedonia this last week after nearly a month away, I’ve again felt refreshingly foreign. Having been elsewhere in Europe and home in the US, I’ve been contrasting things again in a “bi-cultural” manner. Primarily, (and stealing another term, though one from an anthro course long ago), it’s the “social life of things” (Appadurai, for anyone who knows him) here that really puts life in contrast to that in the US.

Now don’t get me wrong—people are friendly in the Midwest where I’m from, but the extent to which we socialize and perceive our time as ours is in fact quite different. For example, a large family lunch my wife and I went to when we were visiting Indiana a few weeks ago included a couple of aunts and uncles and some of their kids (all adults though). However, unlike in Macedonia where a family lunch of that nature—a reunion, or just at the weekend—will last hours, if not all afternoon into the evening, my cousins all departed with an hour of arriving, having other things to do (two admittedly have children who they needed to attend to apparently). Yet lunch only then lasted another hour, and things wrapped up—the eating, and moreso, the several concurrent conversations occurring at once. And this is another difference between here and home—in the US we all want to be engaged in conversation, whereas here, unless it’s a very large group, people often sit around listening to one person speak at a time, or a conversation that’s passed off as it changes. “Macedonia, Timeless…”

Thus the social life of things in a general sense is quite different. Even last weekend we spent with my wife’s family at their weekend house, and when her parents departed the evening before us, some neighbors came over and insisted that for us “not to be alone” we should come over to their place. We had to say no a few times for them to back off, as it’s really not a part of Macedonian culture to be on ones own, even a young couple. And independently? Most Peace Corps volunteers here know the feeling of going through culture shock while living with a host family during training and wanting to just be alone, to read or write or think or sleep(!) But it just doesn’t work like that—when you’re awake you should be with other people. It’s not written as such, but that’s largely how it is. It honestly makes me wonder when people have time to reflect. I think the notion of reflection is thus somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. I couldn’t say how many cultures value it, but it seems to be a characteristic of an individualistic society, and thus in the US we tend to consider it a value that we learn and grow from. Americans don’t want unsolicited advice, we want to figure things out for ourselves.

In Macedonia? Society and cultural customs are far more complex. Children are given much more freedom in some regards, but they’re quickly indoctrinated into the family and very much raised by it. These are somewhat of generalizations, but overall, while in the US we consider ourselves to raise our children, they are actually very much raised through their education, extracurricular activities, and things they’re exposed to through extreme exposure to various media. Whereas I’ve always thought “I must return to the US to raise my kids (for the educational system),” I’ve met Macedonians who’d lived abroad and returned here for the opposite reason once their children reached school-age—they want their children around their family and culture (to heck with the school system!) This is without a doubt a reflection of the economic system in which the two countries I write about live under—one is wealthy and one much less so, but it’s also cross-cultural. What is available for consumption in Macedonia pales in comparison to the US, and the notion that good education will always lead to success is not highly considered here, particularly post-socialist and perhaps more among the Albanian minority (who were largely excluded from the benefits of the socialist machine). Less educated (institutionally), their financial success today is evidence of this. But to make my point: it's not all materialism here (or hasn't been in recent decades), and thus I'd wager to say that the family unit and the culture from it is deemed more valuable than in the US, where we cherish the notion of the nuclear family, but have much less of it overall and expect the system and society to be a large part of our lives. Within them is where we live, work, spend, buy...

Yet speaking of the “things” aspect of Appadurai’s statement, it was his economic anthropological work assessing cultural values of commodities that led him to write his book titled as such. His research explored how in one South Pacific island culture TVs were seen as prestigious items, even when there was no electricity to power them. Plastic bags were less prestigious but nonetheless seen as foreign and used in various ways for practical and material purposes.

To this end, while Macedonia is an industrialized country, their poor economy would make one think that consumption and goods might play less of a role in their lifestyle. They admittedly buy fewer new items (does anyone buy more than Americans?), but something that’s long fascinated me here is the prestige associated with commodities, particularly technology. Anyone who knows Mediterranean culture knows that image is an important aspect of peoples’ lives, but Macedonians have several customs associated with products and purchases that seem unusual to Americans at first.

In particular is style over practicality, such as in dressing certain ways and showing off by purchasing expensive items (from new phones to cars) when one truly doesn’t have the money to do so. Their commodities may be being used, but for their intended purpose? What does a barely employed guy need with a Blackberry or iPhone? This happens stateside, but perhaps because of our development of such technology and the technology gap, I would say Americans understand the functionality of the technology and use it as such—sms, email, internet, etc.—and much more frequently.

Technology aside (though I’m always fascinated with our use of it, despite my personal technological ineptitude!), also on my mind recently has been work ethic and moreso behavior within the workplace. As we see when growing up, many Americans work long hours, often being absent from home for at least nine if not ten, eleven, twelve hours a day, merely for their job. In addition to the lengthy workdays, we have a pressure filled work environment where “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean [house].” The movie Office Space summed it up well—the busy-ness, bureacracy, and rather beguiling way we’re convinced to work long days (money, but also "team" effort, corporate spirit, "flare"...). Not to mention, it’s a job and without it one's life can be purposeless.

But here, things are very different. A job is valued as something to have which provides income, but once it’s gotten people tend to take it easy. Not to say there are no hard working individuals here, but there’s much more an attitude of “we’ll get the work done when it’s time…in the meantime, let’s drink coffee and shoot the breeze.” And team spirit? Not much. A work environment, in my experience, is more pleasure filled and laidback, but perhaps lacking in advancement—the work may get done, but if everything’s at the last minute there’s not much time to make corrections or revisions. (Perhaps that’s just the writing instructor in me, but this happened today at work…) A lack of incentives to work hard (eg, moving up the "ladder") though is certainly a factor...

Well, must wrap up this note, but wanted to try to post given the swift disappearance of the month of August. A fantastic wedding in Italy, then a visit home, and return via Kyiv kept me quite busy. My job though, with American Councils, will put me on the road a good deal in the coming months, as I travel to Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia, in addition to throughout Macedonia, repeatedly, so hopefully I’ll have more fodder to share. Thanks for reading and happy Labor Day (and on September 8, Macedonian Independence Day!)