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In Socialism Now: Singing Activism after Yugoslavia, Ana Hofman embarks on a captivating journey through singing, songs, and other cultural expressions to trace the recent recuperation of socialist ideas and experiences in the post-Yugoslav context. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, the book explores how activism uses collective singing to navigate the adverse effects of neoliberalism that have shaped the lives of people in the region after socialism, offering a nuanced account of its promises and limitations.
Socialism Now imparts a perspective on the politics of music and sound outside the usual understanding of social justice or social change. It calls for the centrality of the material conditions in which music is performed and experienced, particularly the realities of labor and leisure. Hofman introduces the concept of strategic amateurism, which provides a unique perspective on the power of non-professional, community-based leisure activities in contesting the pervasive commodification in all spheres of life. Through its in-depth sociopolitical and cultural analysis of contemporary forms of music activism, Socialism Now revalorizes the so-called lost knowledge and historical experiences from the former Second World in envisioning music and sound's anti-capitalist political potential today.
"Socialism Now. Singing Activism after Yugoslavia traces the activities of self-organized singing collectives that have been recuperating a repertoire of Yugoslav and international revolutionary, partisan, and workers' songs, and contemporary socially-engaged pieces in the last two decades. Their singing activism demasks the privatization, dispossession, and political and social fragmentation that, instead of a promised capitalist dreamland, have shaped lives in the region after the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia. Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, Socialism Now offers a nuanced account of collective singing as the way of organizing against the adverse effects of neoliberalism in its potentialities and limits"--
