Mitja VELIKONJA, Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe, Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2020

Hana ĆURAK

Hana ĆURAK Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute for European Ethnology & University of Zürich, Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies

Abstract

The book Post-socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe by Dr. Mitja Velikonja is a systematic and detailed longitudinal study of political graffiti and street art in the post-socialist era of a region. Providing both a theoretical blueprint for culturally analyzing the visual culture of graffiti and street art and an area-specific analysis focusing on the period of transition in the region, Velikonja advocates for the emergence of “graffitology” as an interdisciplinary inquiry into the significance of these cultural expressions. According to the author, this underestimated genre of “profane culture” reflects the complex interplay between social structure, ideology, and aesthetic resolutions in the transitional period of post-socialist countries.