Working at the Margins in Interwar Yugoslavia

Prostitutes, beggars, folk healers, peddlers, wandering artists and bear-leaders: this book shows how work shaped their relations with the state and the rest of their world. The protagonists of the book’s story lived on the fringes of society and engaged in activities that were only partially recognized, from a legal and social point of view, as proper jobs, while some of them had no job at all. The main aim of the book is to assess Yugoslavia’s disciplining and social engineering practices seen through the lens of socially marginal workers. The analysis shows that the South-Slav regions entered a new, more radical phase of social disciplining. Yet, it is not simply a history of social marginalization and repression. This book also tells a story of active protests, of unexpected compromises, and of resistance. The six chapters of this study allow for a better understanding of the everyday lives of a huge number of common people, considering both the many non-workers, and all those citizens and institutions who interacted with them. What emerges is a fascinating world, a space of values, ideas, and practices that played an important role in shaping interwar Yugoslav history.