For Love, Family and Nation: Food Scarcity, Neoliberalism and the Lives of Croatian Women

• In Event: The Politics of Dislocation: Reimaging Citizenship

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia (2011-2013), this paper recalls the experiences of working Croatian women whose salaries were meager or entirely frozen in the latter part of the 1990s until the most recent neoliberal reforms in the new millennium. I discuss the strategies these women adopted to secure their livelihoods and provide caregiving to their loved ones. Specifically, I present examples of women using their knowledge about food-foraging and preparation—passed down from one generation of women to the next and symbolically associated with national patriotism—to bridge the food shortages.

Presenter

• Nila G. Hofman, DePaul University