Theodora Vetta, <em>Democracy struggles: NGOs and the politics of Aid in Serbia</em>, New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2018, pp. 240
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3940
Recensione di Theodora Vetta, Democracy struggles: NGOs and the politics of Aid in Serbia, New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2018, pp. 240.
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Tijana Morača
Anuac
Theodora Vetta, <em>Democracy struggles: NGOs and the politics of Aid in Serbia</em>, New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2018, pp. 240
Text.Serial.Journal
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Book reviews
2019-12-29
2019-12-13
2019-12-29
2019-12-29
309-312
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Tijana Morača
2019/12/29
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3940
309
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2239-625X
2
312
Theodora Vetta, <em>Democracy struggles: NGOs and the politics of Aid in Serbia</em>, New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2018, pp. 240
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                                      2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 309-312




                                                                       RECENSIONI
Theodora VETTA | Democracy Struggles. NGOs and the politics of aid in Serbia,
New York and Oxford, Berghahn, 2018, pp. 240.


   Vetta’s book offers a refreshing and much-needed class-informed analysis
of the NGO world in Serbia. The monograph co me s out of fieldwork
conducted between 2006 and 2010, testifying to the end of the first decade of
the country’s “democratic transition” that began with the overthrow of
Milošević. Having moved away from their anti-regime stance of the 1990s,
NGOs have mainly come to play the role of state partners in the scope of the
country’s postsocialist transformation.
   In the Introduction Vetta contextualizes her field by providing a brief
overview of broader socio-political developments and the emergence of civic
organizing. Situating the NGO phenomenon in post-socialist and post-
conflict Serbia, she also contextualizes it with reference to the global aid
industry. In Chapter 1 she uses the material from an NGO training seminar
to critically analyse power relations embedded within interventions of
“empowerment”. While constructing and pathologizing certain cultural
traits, such as apathy, the training sought to promote entrepreneurial
citizens who would work on social change through NGO project framework.
In Chapter 2 Vetta argues that the term “NGOization” implying conservative
transformation of once activist organizations does not capture well the
trajectory of Serbia’s NGOs. Rather than NGOs losing their authenticity due
to donor conditionalities, she points to the continuity between pre- and
post-2000 periods, showing how NGOs kept liberal democracy and EU
integration on top of their agendas. In Chapter 3 Vetta argues that the
positionality of local NGO workers was greatly marked by the conditions of
precarity. She sees them as projectariat coping with unstable living
conditions, rather than as an elite with privileged access to resources.
However, the contradictions underlying the N G O world often remain


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Tijana Morača
2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 309-312.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3940
310                                                  THEODORA VETTA | DEMOCRACY STRUGGLES


invisible behind the widely shared discourse presenting NGOs as bearers of
normatively loaded ideas of European values, democracy, modern identities,
etc. As the argument goes, this discourse is part of concrete power struggles
as it serves to legitimize NGOs as ideal means for achieving desired social
interventions. In Chapter 4, Vetta shows how those supporting nationalistic
political options, seen as the adversary to the NGO political project, often do
so in response to dispossessions which they witnessed. Those working in
public sector and state-owned enterprises, rather than falling victims to
populist manipulation, supported the Radical party, the only one vocally
criticizing the ongoing privatizations, as a response to precariousness which
they were experiencing. Chapter 5 discusses the way in which development
interventions, represented as participatory, can suppress and deny “local”
voices when they are not aligned with these interventions. In the case
discussed, the project supporting grassroots activism, while in fact
promoting the devolving of state functions to the local NGOs, discredited
already existing structures of community organizing, which viewed the state
from the perspective of rights and entitlements. The last Chapter criticizes
the assumed clash between the state and the NGO sector. Focusing on
welfare, Vetta argues that the real division line is between those actors that
are working as service providers, and those that circulate in the realm of
expert policy making. However, the discourse of state-NGO clash is
perpetuated as a strategy of stigmatizing the state and valorizing what is
seen as efficiency-driven NGO practices. The concluding chapter highlights
some of the analysed contradictions related to the NGO phenomenon in
Serbia, such as the way in which this sector took part in stigmatization of
secure labour and precarization of work, and contributed to volatility of
service provision. The project of democracy promotion built on existing
premises of non-representative and non-accountable expert intervention is
seen as fundamentally failed.
   The book provides essential class-informed analysis for anyone interested
in the working of aid industry in the context of post-socialist transformations.
Much of the intellectual production on post-socialist Serbia (and more
generally the post-Yugoslav region) deploys “culturalist-identitarian”
register, working with categories such as ethnicity, religion, nationalism,
and often placing emphasis on the perceived traits of “local” culture and
subjectivities. In contrast to this, Vetta traces structural processes, such as
public sector restructuring, as factors shaping social relations. In doing so,
she joins an emerging anthropological scholarship which provides fresh
lenses to the transformational processes and social divisions in post


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Yugoslav space (see Stef Jansen, Yearnings in the meantime, 2015; Marek
Mikuš , Frontiers of civil society, 2018; Čarna Brković, Managing ambiguity,
2017).
    I find her analysis of the resurgence of the Radical party in relation to the
dispossessions brought about by the privatization particularly ground-
breaking. Rather than ascribing it to people succumbing to populist
nationalistic rhetoric, which was a widely accepted explanation at the time,
she points out how this political option succeeded in harnessing resentment
towards privatization and more broadly towards the mainstream liberal
transition model.
    Furthermore, as a former NGO worker turned researcher and consultant, I
find her analysis of labour patterns within the NGO sector very much called
for. Vetta provides us with a fresh perspective on how precarity and
inequalities are perpetuated and resistance is quieted behind NGO
normative rhetoric. In doing so, she charts the territory for future research,
as these topics unfortunately still remain largely unpacked. This can at least
partially be explained in relation to the fact that a lot of what we know about
NGOs comes from a hybrid network composed of scholars, policy-makers
and consultants who are themselves often part of the NGO realm.
    This opens up the question of a potential dialogue between Vetta’s
contribution and NG O practices. Although critically uncovering structural
conditions of the development world might seem irreconcilable with
development practices, which instead require a closure of alternatives, I still
find the possibility of engaging with NGO practitioners worth considering.
While reproducing normative rhetoric and instrumental rationality in their
daily work, they are also often painfully aware of the normative dissonance
pervading their professional environments. In a broader sense, such a
dialogue may constitute an opportunity for contestation and for
transforming NGO practices so that plurality of narratives are enabled.
    Vetta’s methodological choice was to engage with multiple interlocutors
across the NGO sector rather than conduct in-depth participant observation
wi t h in a particular organization or project. She provides compelling
explanation of this choice: for example, she rightly notes that in an
atmosphere of competition for donor funding, working with a single NGO
might have limited her access to other organizations. However, I got the
impression that in some cases, such as the training analysed in Chapter 1,
t h e research would have benefited from prolonged engagement with the
training participants. Such engagement could have revealed the way in
which the empowerment framework was being negotiated, translated and
carried through beyond the training itself.

                                       2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 309-312
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  Lastly, it is interesting to combine the reading offered by Vetta’s monograph
with the one of Mikuš (2018). Working on a similar topic (civil society in
Serbia), but looking at a later period, he testifies to the way in which NGOs
became more confrontational vis-a-vis the state in the context of the authoritarian
turn of the 2010s. Moreover, there was a rise of voices critical of the liberal
capitalist transformation, which were connected to NGO circles, which
speaks to the need to continue unpacking the NGO realm as a non-linear
process and a continual site of struggle.



                                                                     Tijana MORAČA
                                                                Independent scholar
                                                             tijanamoraca@gmail.com




2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 2, DICEMBRE 2019: 309-312
