Consuming the “Other:” The South-Eastern European Case

Abstract

This article describes the local and transnational processes that led to ethnic conflict, highlighting the rearticulation of class, ethnicity, and gender which resulted from the 1991 dismemberment of the Yugoslav Federation and the independence of Macedonia. As the entry point for my research, I focused on the domain of consumption and material culture, specifically of interior decorations. I analyzed furniture, decorative objects, and the division of space within the homes of my informants. The central argument of my book is that consumption has redefined and mediated ethnicity in post-1991 Macedonia. My data reveal that material culture and consumption practices both reflect and create ethnic tension between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians. Theoretically this article links the analytical concepts prevalent in social anthropology such as ethnicity, material culture and consumption with the psychoanalytic concepts of fantasy, desire and loss. This link provides a rigorous terrain for anthropological investigation that grounds individual and collective experiences of people from different ethnic and class background into a larger national and transnational context.

Keywords

• ethnicity
• conflict
• material culture
• consumption
• Macedonians
• Albanians