Bourgeois Balkans: world-building in Belgrade and Sofia 1830-1912

Jovanovic, Milos

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/95608 Copy

Description

Title

Bourgeois Balkans: world-building in Belgrade and Sofia 1830-1912

Author(s)

Jovanovic, Milos

Issue Date

2016-12-02

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Todorova, Maria N.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Todorova, Maria N.

Committee Member(s)

• Steinberg, Mark D.
• Harris, Dianne
• Hitchins, Keith

Department of Study

History

Discipline

History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• urban
• Balkans
• capitalism
• cities
• gender
• architecture
• carceral
• prisons
• space
• sex work
• dispossession

Abstract

This dissertation examines the transformation of urban life in the Balkan capitals of Belgrade and Sofia between 1830 and 1912. In the nineteenth century, mayors, planners, doctors and intellectuals envisioned a new, urban society in which progressive social transformation could emerge through a combination of political and economic institutions based on expertise. I explore the ambitions and limits of this “bourgeois world-building” through three constitutive processes: the production of space, the gendered transformation of intimate labor, and the re-calibration of state violence. With the advent of autonomous rule, the Balkan capitals were reconstructed as “European” cities through dispossession, real-estate speculation and municipal corruption. For architects, merchant capitalists, and municipal officials, the post-Ottoman city appeared as a landscape of accumulation, a vision often frustrated by its failure to materialize in full. Medical professionals and police officials envisioned the city as a space of managed, commodified intimacy, yet found limits in expanding institutional control over sex workers, domestic servants, and other working women. Activists and state actors were likewise frustrated in their attempts to create productive urban subjects through scientific policing and prison labor. Ultimately, the application of bourgeois visions was both intensive and costly, limited by the scope of elite ambitions and the struggle of those who were excluded from them.

Graduation Semester

2016-12

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95608

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Milos Jovanovic

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