National Reproduction with (Un)Disciplined Bodies: Women Moving to the Politically Possible in pre-Yugoslavian Societies (Examples from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia)
National Reproduction with (Un)Disciplined Bodies: Women Moving to the Politically Possible in pre-Yugoslavian Societies (Examples from Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia)

Summary/Abstract: This paper is about national reproduction relations and the ways they affected women’sbodies in context of women’s accessibility to public and political space in the late 19th century Serbia,Bosnia and Croatia. The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century embark eventsand processes of national emancipation for the Balkan peoples. The examples taken here are setin the different states of ‘nationalizing’ and ‘nation-building,’ as well as in different iterations ofmodernity, with the intention to trace possible patterns and typologies in the relation of nationalreproduction, in its ethno-cultural dimension, and the opening of new political spaces for womenfrom these different national entities and territories through education, autonomous organizing,charity and anonymous domestic labor. I find the interest and vindication of my intention inthe historical events after 1918, when the mentioned territories and nationalities became part ofnew state – the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Kingdom of Yugoslavia. With that, thestate strategies of national reproduction towards women gained new qualities with centralizationand ideological unification of the ideal ‘Yugoslav’ woman as its final edifice.

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