BB: Class in the Shade of National Belonging: The Case of Late Habsburg Trieste

The history of Habsburg Trieste has for more than a century been influenced by different national ideologies. Some claim this upper Adriatic port city as eternally Italian, others see it as genuinely Slovene, while some even claim for it to be the Austrian Mediterranean jewel. By looking at the archives of various voluntary associations active in the city and attempting to give voices to historical actors themselves, this talk hopes to illustrate a very different picture of Trieste, one not dictated by national belonging, but by class. What people put on their plates, what music they chose to listen to, which newspapers they found relevant, how they treated their animals, and numerous other everyday practices influenced the social life of this city much more than the then arising national ideas and separated the workers from the supposedly “civilized” members of the bourgeoisie.
 
Dr Daša Ličen is a historical anthropologist. She is a researcher at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an assistant professor at the University of Maribor. Her doctoral dissertation on bourgeois sociability in late Habsburg Trieste has recently been awarded by the University of Ljubljana as the best dissertation in humanities and social sciences. She is currently working on turning it into a book.