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Article: Elvis and slivovitz: as a towering wave of Western culture washes over the globe, age-old traditions are pushed to the side in an unsteady transition to an unkown future.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- December 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I walk through the open-air market in my adopted Bosnian home looking for an eggplant. The old woman selling vegetables is wearing a hand-woven shawl and a linen scarf with an ancient hand-embroidered geometrical motif. In the stall next to her a young man wears a T-shirt with the words `Beverly Hills 90210'.
Twenty years ago you would have found hand-woven rugs for sale in the Tuzla market. Now there are factory-made carpets with pictures of Elvis or the Manhattan skyline.
Despite being nominally part of the Soviet bloc, Yugoslavia was wide open to Western culture by the early 1950s. Right into the 1980s, Yugoslav gastarbeiters (guestworkers) were ...