Between Emic and Etic

This article examines the trope of systematic destruction (sustavno/sistemsko uništavanje) and traces how it was mobilized during the 2018 Croatian shipbuilding crisis. First, an ethnographic vignette introduces the political actors and issues at stake during the crisis. The literature on post-socialist labor transformations and deindustrialization in South-East Europe is reviewed, and the tensions between political actors and policy are described. The concept of “predatory privatization” and the etic concept of “creative destruction”are then discussed as a prelude to an analysis of the emic concept of “systematic destruction.” Finally, the relations between the different concepts are described and the emotive power and political uses of the “systematic destruction” trope are explored and placed in the wider context of post-Yugoslav deindustrialization.