The objective of this study was to understand the predatory financial practices of large Croatian agribusiness conglomerates, including supermarket chains in the region, and to understand how these practices impacted the lives and livelihoods of small farmers entangled in their financial webs. It pursued, in part, developing the scholar’s understanding of predatory debt resolution practices commonly used by large corporations to maximize liquidity to the detriment of suppliers and competitors. The various work packages focused on themes like corruption, informality, state-business ties, economic values, the geopolitics of tax regimes, greater market issues like people’s conceptualizations of capitalism, and how small entrepreneurs work together to overcome market issues they collectively face. This range of economic topics, from macro to micro, allowed the scholar to take a holistic approach to studying the Croatian economy and be able to flesh out broad conclusions grounded in detailed ethnographic materials collected in the fieldwork phase of the project.
More broadly, the problem being addressed was the overall uneven market playing field of the Croatian economy and particularly, how small family businesses navigate this market. This is important for society, since in an increasingly globalized world, no local practices are truly confined to their locality, but have a tendency to spread across borders and continents. This project’s objective was to understand not just how predatory business practices play out, but how they are felt, interpreted, and challenged by individual actors.
