Advantages of Subordination, Weaknesses of Emancipation? How Croatian Agricultural Entrepreneurs Perceive the EU

U ovom radu autorica kroz niz polustrukturiranih intervjua analizira predodžbe o Europskoj uniji kod skupine elitnih poljoprivrednih poduzetnika, koji su se prijavili na pretpristupne fondove EU-a poput SAPARD-a. Glavnina rada posvećena je, u intervjuima prevladavajućem, doživljaju da je hiperregulirani i birokratizirani sustav EU-a mogući saveznik u borbi s domaćim – tromim, a ponekad i korumpiranim – sustavom poslovanja. Na temelju takve predodžbe o Europskoj uniji, autorica propituje i kritičke pristupe koji proširenje Unije promatraju prvenstveno kroz imperijalne aspekte njezinih politika, zanemarujući pritom emancipatorski potencijal koji prilagodba pravilima i mjerilima Unije može imati u lokalnim društvenim kontekstima. Jedan od zaključaka rada jest i to da su, iz poduzetničke perspektive, kulturne opreke svojstvene poimanju lokalne simboličke geografije bile manje važne od ekonomskih opreka pa je u intervjuima, primjerice, suprotstavljanje socijalizma i kapitalizma bilo interpretativno plodonosnije od suprotstavljanja Srednje Europe i Balkana ili europskog Istoka i Zapada.The author examines the notions of EU within an elite group of agricultural entrepreneurs, who have applied to EU pre-accession funds for agriculture, such as SAPARD or IPARD. Although the members of this social group are among few Croatian citizens who directly received funding from the European Union, most of them exhibited skeptical views regarding Croatian accession process, ranging from the lack of trust in positive outcomes of Union’s policies in the agricultural domain, to the pessimistic expectations that most of Croatian agriculture will simply be wiped out once the country joins the EU. One of the common positive features in agricultural entrepreneur’s perception of EU was a firm belief that the membership will bring "more order” to Croatian state structures. In the article, this notion is explained through interviewees’ descriptions of their everyday entrepreneurial practices. Squeezed in-between strict deadlines for project submissions, the seasonal works that need to be carried out, and an atmosphere which is all but business-friendly, their overstrained everyday routine limited the entrepreneurs’ perspective to "here and now”, making the conversations about local, regional or continental symbolic geography a somewhat frivolous pastime to which only members of the privileged elites can commit to. From this perspective, cultural divides, characteristic of symbolic geographies, were much less important than economic divides, which, in their view, clearly separated "those who earn their own money” from "those who live off of state”. In a similar vein, opposition between socialism and capitalism was much more salient and interpretatively fruitful than opposition between Central Europe and the Balkans, or Eastern and Western Europe. The author also questions the work of those scholars who focus on the EU enlargement in the Balkans by stressing the imperial features of its policies while, at the same time, overlooking and omitting the emancipatory potential of the implementation of EU rules and regulations in the specific local contexts