Balkan Blues. Consumer, Politics after State Socialism

Yuson Jung’s book, which is based on her doctoral thesis, focuses on postsocialist consumer policies in Bulgaria. Her central question concerns Bulgarians’ experience of the construction of a postsocialist consumer market society. Here, she concentrates on those aspects that shed light on the relationship between the state and its citizens.

The book is organized into five chapters. The first sets out the ethnographic framework and defines the issue. The second chapter provides the reader with the historical context of consumer policies during socialism and during Bulgaria’s integration into the European Union (EU). The next two chapters form the core of the book: the author analyzes the transformation of the postsocialist consumer sector and associations, but above all she presents an ethnography of the daily practices of consumers providing examples such as housing, heating, and summer holidays. This enables her to illustrate what citizens expect from the state and how the rights and responsibilities of the citizens are represented. Finally, in her last chapter, Jung explores the insights that her analysis of the Bulgarian situation provide with regard to contemporary consumption. The book concludes with an epilogue on the role of the state followed by an appendix describing Jung’s fieldwork experience and her position as a South Korean researcher.

Jung carried out her fieldwork in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. After a preliminary visit in the summer of 1999, the author conducted the core of her ethnographic research in 2001, 2002, and again in 2008. She then returned regularly to the country for periods of varying length until 2016. Facilitated by her progressively improving language skills and a wide range of informants who she met through her landlords, Jung has been a volunteer member of the Bulgarian National Consumers Association (BNCA) since 1999. This has allowed her to observe their efforts to transform the status of consumers and to introduce the legislation required by European Union membership.

The author argues that postsocialist Bulgaria’s consumer policies can only be fully understood by considering the state’s role and how citizens conceptualize consumer rights and responsibilities. She shows how relations with the Bulgarian state are lived and reproduced in everyday consumer behaviour. Indeed, the state is seen as a regulatory body, an authority that monitors the consumer market, and protects consumers from market abuse. This protection implies that it respects its obligations towards its citizens through a binding social contract. This contract, however, is being undermined by the disruptive norms of consumption introduced by market capitalism. In particular, citizens’ expectations of the state that developed under socialism are not being met. In fact, the transformation of state institutions and consumer policies imposed as a result of accession to the EU run counter to these expectations.

Her excellent ethnography of daily life in Sofia begins in chapter one with a description of consumers’ disappointment over the abundance of counterfeit goods, mente, a term that also expresses the poor quality of these goods. This provokes feelings of anger and powerlessness among her informants. To understand the feelings of Bulgarian consumers in the 21^st century, we must examine the conditions during the socialist period, such as guaranteed access to basic goods and services with limited choice. Socialism also constructed specific relations between citizens, markets, and the state. The latter controlled the production and distribution of goods, acting as an intermediary between consumers and the market. Jung shows how this resulted in sellers having a superior status to buyers. Ultimately the state was responsible for the poor quality of any goods. Many Bulgarians now see the withdrawal of the state from this historical role, largely leaving such matters to the market, as just another example of their own incomprehensible abandonment by the state.

In chapter four, Jung conducts a detailed examination of some of the goods and services which were taken for granted under socialism and which her informants still consider to be necessities: access to home ownership, heating, and holidays by the sea. These examples are a poignant illustration of how citizens react to market conditions: they develop self-help strategies to compensate for their government’s incomprehensible withdrawal from its obligations. The author describes their behaviour as ‘civic engagement’, which is a rather grand term for individual resourcefulness and do-it-yourself. She is interested in the emergence of consumer protection associations and advisors who—without much success—are trying to educate consumers by providing them with comparative surveys, holding information meetings, and distributing magazines, as well as helping them to develop an outlook that is more in tune with their European counterparts.

Jung also describes the development of new consumer legislation in Bulgaria, which is one of the conditions of EU membership. Apparently, it is now up to consumers, not the state, to protect themselves from the market’s shortcomings, with the help of the voluntary sector.

The section in chapter five on Europe’s influence on consumer policies during the EU integration period is unconvincing since it conveys a monolithic idea of this process. The conditions of accession are certainly drawn up by the EU bureaucracy, but they are the outcome of many compromises between member states. Even capitalist European countries that were never socialist states have developed consumer relations with the market and state differently. Yet, there is a common framework for this. The introduction of new consumer legislation and norms has led to quite divergent outcomes in the former socialist countries. Bulgaria’s clumsy and violent transition to a market economy cannot only be explained by its socialist legacy. A second critique concerns the circumstantiality of the book. While it is acceptable for a thesis to include a detailed account of all stages of reflection, this is not the case for a book. It contains far too many repetitions and the argument develops too slowly and risks losing the reader’s interest.

These reservations should, however, not detract from this book’s penetrating coverage of evolving relations between citizens and the state seen though the heuristic lens of contemporary life and especially everyday consumption. The Bulgarian case may in some ways be special, but Yuson Jung’s analysis and narrative have wider relevance.