This study explores the precarious life of Albanians in Kosovo during the 1990s through the oral autobiographical narrative of a retired archivist at the Institute of Albanology in Prishtina. With four decades of institutional experience, the archivist offers a compelling personal narrative of cultural survival under systemic repression. The Institute, founded in 1953, became a target during the violent escalation of Serbian state control, culminating in the forced expulsion of its scientific staff in the early 1990s. This act not only displaced individuals, it also disrupted the scholarly continuity of one of Kosovo’s key scientific and cultural institutions. The archivist’s testimony captures this rupture while illuminating the broader landscape of institutional violence and state-sponsored erasure faced by Albanians in Kosovo. Her narrative highlights how intellectual communities responded by forming parallel academic structures sustaining scientific and cultural life. The study uses this oral history, an archive in itself, to interrogate the role of personal narrative in documenting institutional memory and reconstructing Kosovo’s fraught historical landscape. By bringing her micro-narrative into dialogue with written sources, this work reflects on the violence, resilience, and fragility of life under occupation, while raising questions about memory, resistance, and the ongoing process of state-building in post-war Kosovo.
Drawing on ethnographic narratives, case studies, and large-scale survey data, this article analyses the moral, affective, and relational dimensions of precarity in post-crisis Catalonia (Spain). It argues that precarity is not merely an economic condition but also a grammar that reshapes how people work, relate to one another, and make sense of themselves. Grounded in a recent report on exclusion and poverty in Catalonia (Spain), this study examines three interrelated logics that structure contemporary forms of insecurity and precarity: the commodification of care, the erosion of relational worlds, and the moralization of failure. The commodification of care transforms empathy and care into performative labour, producing a systematic exhaustion that particularly affects women. The erosion of relational worlds reveals how economic fragility and economic transactions progressively dissolve the social fabric and the affective dimensions, giving rise to solitude as a generalized condition. Ultimately, the moralization of failure reveals how neoliberal subjects internalize structural injustice as personal responsibility, while also fostering fragile (and often commodified) forms of repair through spirituality, art, and solidarity. By integrating ethnographic insights with critical theory, the article attempts to develop an anthropology of ontological precarity that is attentive to its moral consequences, situating the Spanish experience within broader post-industrial transformations.
U ovome će se radu istražiti lokalne izvedbe globalnih prehrambenih politika i smjernica koje proizlaze iz različitih dokumenata Agencije za hranu i poljoprivredu Ujedinjenih naroda (FAO) te zagovaraju uspostavu održivijih i zelenijih prehrambenih sustava. Trenutačna koncentracija globalnih smjernica na urbana područja uspostavlja platformu za kreiranje novih okvira ujednačenog razvoja urbanog i periurbanog prostora, a spuštanje političke odgovornosti na lokalnu, gradsku razinu omogućuje raznovrsna, multiaktorska rješenja. Etnografsko istraživanje provedeno u dvama hrvatskim gradovima ilustrirat će lokalne izvedbe globalnih ciljeva prehrambenih politika koje se realiziraju u okviru Milanskog pakta ili su njime nadahnute. Riječ je o neobvezujućem sporazumu o razvoju urbane prehrane čiji je Zagreb potpisnik, a kojemu se Rijeka nastoji pridružiti.
Shared positions on anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and international brotherhood marked the transnational ties between Yugoslavia and several African countries in the context of the Non-Aligned Movement. From the 1960s to the end of the 1980s, through exchange programs and scholarships, students from Africa studied in Yugoslavia and participated in its cultural and political life, also through varied musical experiences ranging from folklore groups to popular music bands. By examining some of their popular music productions, this article investigates how non-aligned alliances and political aspects of the presence of African students in Yugoslavia were reflected in the music they performed. Most songs, mainly covers and in a few cases new compositions, focused on love or light topics, but a few addressed anticolonialism and contemporary African politics or discussed African ways of life and aspirations. In Swahili and English, these pieces display multiple inspirations from various musical genres. They prompt questions about the singers’ communication aims and strategies, the tracks’ production, as well as issues of audience reception and understanding, influenced not only by the competence in the songs’ languages but also by the familiarity with the cultural references, political climate, and engagement with the singers’ creative expression.
This article presents a qualitative analysis of open-ended survey responses examining how university students in Croatia perceive the notion of a “good life” under conditions of precarity. It explores how young people relate to a precarious culture in which economic, temporal, and social insecurities are reflected. The focus is on responses that reveal which aspects of this culture students internalize, which they resist, and how. The paper also examines how they plan their professional futures, the obstacles they identify along the way, and the strategies they employ to overcome them.
