Abstract:
The paper presents the results of a research of a Sofia neighborhood – Dragalevtsi. The case study used the following methods - participant observation, visual methods, in-depth interviews with local residents. Dragalevtsi had experienced different transformations for less than a century – from a former traditional village, to a “villa zone” (an area for holiday homes) of the socialist elite, and now to a prestigious suburb of Sofia that is increasingly becoming a neighborhood of the rich. The study shows that this neighborhood is an interesting case for several reasons. First, Dragalevtsi challenges Pierre Bourdieu’s thesis in The Weight of the World of isomorphism between social and physical space, of social homogeneity of specific quarters, because it is not a homogenous suburb but, conversely, a suburb inhabited by different groups: “new rich” people living side by side with very poor; representatives of Western companies are neighbors with “villagers”, breeding sheep, and with impoverished socialist intelligentsia, etc. Next, it is a place of other social contrasts, the stronger of which is that this “prestigious” Sofia suburb, as it is defined now, is with an archaic infrastructure – without a sewerage system, with bad roads (in some places, just dirt tracks), without street lighting, lack of proper public transportation. The thesis defended in the paper is that this infrastructure generates and strengthens the existing social inequalities. The paper analyzes the different coping strategies of the rich and the poor for overcoming infrastructural problems. The main strategy of the rich is focused on privatization of public goods – creating “private” streets, “private” street lighting. As for the poor, they predominantly have one opportunity – working for the new rich. So, the tendency observed is of re-feudalization – the poor are working in the new rich houses, both groups living with infrastructure, resembling the medieval centuries.
