SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA AND THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT:
SOCIAL, CULTURAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC IMAGINARIES
(edited by Paul Stubbs, McGill-Queen’s University Press, January 2023)

BOOK PANEL ROUNDTABLE
SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA AND THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT

After a summit in Belgrade in September 1961, socialist Yugoslavia, led by President Josip Broz Tito until his death in 1980, initiated a movement with states in the Global South. The Non-Aligned Movement not only offered an alternative to the Cold War polarization between the two hegemonic power blocs but also expressed the hopes of a world emerging from colonial domination.

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement investigates the Non-Aligned Movement both as a top-down, interstate initiative and as a site for transnational exchange in science, art and culture, architecture, education, and industry. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, the book seeks to reveal, rather than ride roughshod over, the contradictory role of socialist Yugoslavia in the decolonial struggles of the Global South. Chapters address topics such as women’s involvement, antifascism and anti-imperialism, cultural and educational exchange, tensions in Yugoslav diplomacy, competing understandings of economic development, the role of the Yugoslav construction company Energoprojekt, Yugoslav relations with Latin America and Africa, and contemporary support for refugees and asylum seekers as a kind of practical and affective afterlife of Yugoslavia’s non-aligned commitments.

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement offers an innovative approach to one of the twentieth century’s most important international movements and confronts issues of economic, social, and cultural rights that remain relevant today. This Book Panel Roundtable uses the book as a starting point for an exploration of the legacies of the Non-Aligned Movement and the role of socialist Yugoslavia in global order, discussing priorities for multi-disciplinary research in the future.

Panelists:

Paul Stubbs is a sociologist and currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia, the editor of the book and author of the Introductory Chapter. His research interests include: global social policy, policy translation, new left-green urban political movements, and poverty and social exclusion. He is currently working on a history of the New International Economic Order.

Nemanja Radonjić is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and also a Research Associate at the Institute for Recent History of Serbia. His main research interests include non-alignment, anti-colonialism, the social history of Yugoslavia, and the relations between socialist Yugoslavia and African anti-colonial movements and post-colonial states. He is the author of a Chapter in the book entitled „A Non-Aligned Continent: Africa in the Global Imaginary of Socialist Yugoslavia“.

Jelena Vasiljević is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her academic background is in political anthropology and citizenship studies. Her expertise and research interests include theories of citizenship, citizenship transformations in the post-Yugoslav states, memory politics, civic engagement and social movements in South-East Europe, and ideas and practices of solidarity.

Stefan Gužvica is a junior researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. He researches the intellectual and political history of Balkan communism, as well as Marxist theories of dependency and uneven development. He is the author of “Before Tito: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge, 1936-1940.”

The event will be photographed and recorded due to publishing on social networks, the website and other information channels for the purpose of promoting the event and activities of the Institute.