Thiessen crafts a fine ethnography of a changing society after the fall of socialism and independent nationhood." - Anastasia Karakasidou, Wellesley College

Ilka Thiessen is a Professor of Anthropology at Malaspina University-College (Nanaimo, BC). She has written extensively on Macedonian culture and identity.

Thiessen is particularly good at bringing out the complexities and ambiguities that haunt the categories often used to make sense of contemporary Macedonian realities: 'Balkan' / 'European', rural / urban, backward / modern, Muslim / Orthodox, Macedonian / Yugoslav.... This book should be read as part of a wider history of post-Yugoslavism, as well as an ethnographic evocation of a particular time and place.

Anastasia Karakasidou, Wellesley College:

In the new cultural landscape of Skopje—the capital of the Republic of Macedonia—Thiessen crafts a fine ethnography of a changing society after the fall of socialism and independent nationhood. Ethnic conflict and violence in Macedonia has preoccupied outside observers and politicians, but the author follows the 'ordinary' lives of a vulnerable group of young female engineers, who are seeking employment in a world of masculine science. From the management of their body, to their ideology about sexuality and national identity, these young women try to distance themselves from the patriarchal nationalist past, only to come face-to-face with the 'masculinity effect' of the liberal democracy that is transforming their society.... This ethnography is an excellent account of how locality responds to the stereotypes of backwardness in a period of liminality, while waiting for Macedonia to emerge worthy of its name.