Utopia of the Uniform

“In Utopia of the Uniform, Tanja Petrovic offers a powerful and compelling narrative that provides a very much needed alternative reading of the end of socialist Yugoslavia. I particularly like the way the author mines the Yugoslav past for the possibilities of a utopian future. This book will shift the debate in a variety of fields.” - Kristen R. Ghodsee, author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us about the Good Life

“Tanja Petrovic’s Utopia of the Uniform is a tender, provocative account of how men lived, thought, and felt in the Yugoslav armed forces. It is also about what happened to their friendships and solidarities when their country came apart at the seams. Petrovic writes about masculinity from a place outside it. In so doing, she captures something that those who live it can’t see.” - Samuel Fury Childs Daly, author of A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War

“Utopia of the Uniform stands out for its engaging language. The large number of first-hand testimonies and photographs transcend the hermeticism of academic literature, making it accessible to a wider readership interested in the former Yugoslavia.” - Astrea Nikolovska, Reviews in Anthropology

"The work is ethnographically rich and theoretically complex, arguing strongly that Yugoslavia was held together by such “affective infrastructures,” which made Yugoslavs see themselves as members of a collectivity. This study is an important corrective to the literature focusing on the wars that ended Yugoslavia and to the anthropology of the state. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." - R. M. Hayden, Choice

"Based on years of research, Utopia of the Uniform is an intimate, tender and revealing study. ... The book will surely appeal not only to scholars of the former Yugoslavia, but those interested in militarization, masculinity and affective memory more broadly." - Nicholas Lackenby, Slavonic and East European Review

"Utopia of the Uniform offers a convincing and provocative account of how men’s friendships and feelings forged while serving in the military continue to live their afterlife more than 30 years after Yugoslavia’s demise." - Lieke Speerstra, Comparative Southeast European Studies

"Petrovic makes a compelling contribution to our understanding of Yugoslavia’s legacy, demonstrating how past utopian visions can still offer alternative futures in postsocialist spaces dominated by nationalist narratives." - Melissa Bokovoy, American Historical Review