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- Convenors:
-
Frances Pine
(Goldsmiths College, University of London)
Joanna Zalewska
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- Discussants:
-
Michal Buchowski
(Adam Mickiewicz University)
Vlad Naumescu (Central European University)
László Fosztó (ISPMN Cluj, Romania)
Eniko Vincze (Babes-Bolyai University)
Vintila Mihailescu (National School of Political and Administrative Studies)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- R2
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 August, -, Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
How do eastern and western European anthropologists forge a new common ground in the research practices of the new, youngest, generation of researchers? What unexpected commonalities are found and what shibboleths have to be sacrificed to build this space?
Long Abstract:
Our panel examines the way eastern European anthropologists have used their local histories, including their experience of 'socialism' to inform their work outside their own region and the influences western anthropologists have brought to bear on their work in eastern Europe. We shopfront the work of the youngest generation of doctoral students working in these fields - bringing contrasts and parallels from more senior scholars invited as discussants. The organisers of this panel coordinate a Marie Curie network promoting anthropological research in the region but have drawn in a broader set of researchers.
Session 1. At home and abroad
Session 2. Circulating practices
Session 3. Circulating and migrating persons
Session 4. General reflections and discussion
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to focus on the most significant issues related to an at home social/cultural anthropology. It uses current Romanian context as a case study.
Paper long abstract:
The first aim of this paper is to focus on, in a diachronic way, the domain of Anthropology of Eastern Europe as a western construct, briefly analyzing the most interesting and involved moments it profiles (at this level, assessing mainly anthropologies of socialism and subsequently, post- socialism).
The second main goal of my paper is to see how and why an at-home social /cultural anthropology "appears" after 1990 and is created/accepted as such by several universities in Eastern Europe (I use the Romanian case as a detailed example). Who are the performers of this at home anthropology, why they choose to adopt such an identity, which are their professional and "ideological profiles"- are key questions of my approach.
It is, I think, compulsory to clarify also the relation between this "new type of research" and the cultural /social research traditions (local, "indigenous" ethnographies and folklore, and also, in a few cases, sociological approaches), how this at home anthropology and its performers view and confront to the traditional researches.
I am going to articulate all these questions and to offer updated answers to them, putting them in 2008 context, considering also the role of exchange programs and new educational policies profiled in a big part of Europe nowadays.
Paper short abstract:
Our presentation deals with the history of the discipline of anthropology in two South Eastern European countries. More specifically, it investigates the development of empirical social science and theory in Bulgaria and Greece during the last century throughout a double methodological perspective: a) an ethnographic study of academic and research institutions and texts, and b) an oral history dealing with the accounts of the social actors that played an active role to the organization of the discipline in these two countries. It explores comparatively what seems to be “particular” for each national scientific tradition, demonstrating the parallel trajectories of the discipline in the two neighbour countries, which have been attached to different academic paradigms over the last 50 years.
Paper long abstract:
In both Greece and Bulgaria, the development of social sciences in general and of social anthropology in particular, until very recently has been studied only at a national level. These approaches placed much emphasis on the comparison with the theoretical and methodological fields developed in "Western" countries or the Soviet Union respectively, attempting to catch up the discrepancies between the domestic practices and the western or soviet "models". Transforming the scope of this inquiry in comparative perspective between the countries of SEE could be an interesting project, as it shows that what seems to be "particular" to one or another national scientific tradition are similar phenomena, due to common social and historical frameworks. In search for the commonalities and differences between the Greek and Bulgarian theoretical schemes and research practices, we come accross of the strong influence of history and folklore in both academic traditions at the end of the19th and the first half of the 20th century, the beginning of empirical studies in SEE in the interwar period, the breaking up of contacts and exchanges between "eastern" and "western" scholars due to the Cold War, as well as the reconfigurations of the academic field after the fall of socialism in the early 1990s, when anthropology becomes more institutionalized in the academia and is (well) established in both Bulgarian and Greek universities.
Paper short abstract:
The paper compares mutual constructions of foreign and local anthropologies in cases of Slovenia/Yugoslavia and China.
Paper long abstract:
Similar to Central and Eastern Europe, in the People's Republic of China (PRC) socio-cultural anthropology in its Western form has gained a great influence and popularity in the recent years both in terms of theoretical approaches and fieldwork practices. Reflecting on my education and training in Slovenia as well as fieldwork experience in the PRC I compare mutual constructions of foreign and local ethnologies/anthropologies in the cases of Slovenia and China. Familiarity with Slovenian discussions at the time of (explicit) introduction of cultural anthropology into the name and curriculum of my home department in the 1990s informs my understanding of current Chinese debates on ethnology (minzuxue) and nativization (bentuhua) of cultural anthropology. Furthermore, I examine my own shifting positionality among the various sets of ethnological and anthropological traditions throughout different stages of my PhD research. I consider these issues by focusing on two examples: the different ways foreign and domestic scholars have dealt with issues of religion, ethnicity and state policy among Bosnian and Chinese Muslims and the extent the concept of postsocialism can be a useful analytical tool for understanding contemporary China.
Paper short abstract:
Through the ethnography of a local community office (mjesna zajednica) in Mostar (BiH)the paper examines the circulation and transformation of concepts and practices of local democracy in East and West.
Paper long abstract:
One of the most dearly held divisions of the Cold War period was the one into Eastern totalitarian and Western democratic regimes. After collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing breakdown of other socialist regimes, it fuelled much of the democratization efforts in now post-socialist countries.
The paper aims at unravelling ostensibly Western notions of democracy promoted in the Yugoslav successor state Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH). Tito's third way and Yugoslavia's claim to socialist democracy through workers' self-management form a unique background to explore questions of state-building, regime transformation and democratization. A close look at the ideologies and practices surrounding the local community office (mjesna zajednica) - formerly part of the system of socialist self-management and still existing in many parts of BiH - not only reveals deep ambiguities within concepts of democracy promoted by the international community, but also directs attention to changing configurations of the state, and multiple layers of meanings of democracy in West European countries themselves.
The ethnography of a local community office in Mostar (BiH) thus serves to contribute to an anthropology which is sensitive to the historical genesis of concepts and practices of local democracy, and the often forgotten cross-fertilization of ideas between East and West. The paper aims at reviving a tradition of mutual learning and of inquiry into each others' experience of local democracy. It extends this line of thinking to critical questions about the changing role of the state, and conditions for local democracy in contemporary European societies in East and West.
Paper short abstract:
The term ‘third age’ is created in ideological purposes of speaking for retired people. In Warsaw this concept is promoted by the institutions sponsored by the EU, acting for the sake of the elderly. The term serves for fighting with exclusion of the elderly, but at the same time it introduces ‘global’ ideology of active ageing which is new in local experience.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of the third age is derived from the modern division of life course into stages. The third age is a period of retirement, when the elderly free from their everyday previous duties can finally realize themselves, and it is juxtaposed to the fourth age, time of decline and dying. The concept of the third age was meant to give the meaning of self-realization instead of exclusion to the retirement.
Nowadays modern capitalist society pays more attention to consumption than production. Withdrawal from job market does not exclude citizens from consumer activities if they have enough resources to spend. Retired people are not excluded as long as they participate in leisure culture, which requires material, social and cultural capital.
In Poland the concept of the third age is promoted by the institutions sponsored by the EU, acting for the sake of the elderly and it is spread among those who have direct access to the services of these institutions. They promote volunteering and intergenerational cooperation. The third age is presented as difficult period: excess of free time, difficult financial situation, loneliness. The aim is to fight with exclusion of the elderly, but at the same time it introduces 'global' ideology of active ageing which may not suit local experience of ageing.
It seems that the term 'third age' is created in ideological purposes of speaking for retired people. Later on the third age has become a concept which divides the younger, wealthier, educated, healthier (the third age) from the poor, ill, uneducated (the fourth age).
Paper short abstract:
This paper will focus on the transformative process of the Lithuanian agricultural sector in the years leading up to and since EU membership. The aim is to investigate the impact of institutional and legal changes initiated by EU agricultural programs for new member states on rural daily life.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss the consequences of the EU entrance in the Lithuanian countryside four years after membership was obtained. I will argue that the EU is not arriving at an empty space, and development is not only coming from "above" as people already have their own social settings, their own daily practices and their own (unwritten) norms and codes of behavior.
I will furthermore stress that it is not necessarily the initiated and planned changes which have influenced rural daily life the most, it is what I here call "second row changes" - the changes that came after the changes. In the restructuring of the countryside, which mainly aims at closing small farms and setting up big farms, no further development of the rural infrastructure came along. As a consequence hundreds of thousands of young Lithuanians have left Lithuania since the country joined the EU. The big scale migration has consequences for the family structure and thus for the ways people obtain economic and social security. In my paper I will look at these recent changes in the countryside and the strategies people make use of in order to come to terms with the new situation.
Paper short abstract:
Many anthropologists deal with exchange of labor, money and knowledge in order to capture the dialectics of labor migration. However, there is hardly any analysis of instances of death in migration, which for many migrants constitutes daily experience and brings out hefty symbolic connotations.
Paper long abstract:
Majority of Ukrainians in Italy work in a care sector where they have to look after old and terminally sick people. For most migrants the death of the person in care means not only personal trauma caused by the intense care work of the last days of the person's life but also marks the loss of job and home. For many, the burden is intensified by the fact that they have to leave their own parents and children without proper care in Ukraine.
The paper, explores three major presences of death in the life of Ukrainian migrants, i.e. the death of the persons in care, the death of migrants' family members back at home, and the instances of death of Ukrainian migrants in Italy. Death, stretching across the borders, exposes migrants' own structural and spatial limitations, financial and legal restrictions, symbolically represents migrants' loss of time spent away from the families, and the loss of intimacy with their dear ones in the course of migration.
Paper short abstract:
Chechen immigrants in Poland face a precarious situation; having escaped an oppressive existence in their homeland, they attempt to reconstruct their lives. This reconstruction occurs against in the insecure backdrop that dominates the daily existence of marginal groups in contemporaryEasternEurope.
Paper long abstract:
In my paper, I elaborate on continuing anthropological fieldwork carried out among immigrants from the Northern Caucasus living in the Eastern Polish city of Lublin. By the end of 2007, the number of Chechen and Ingush immigrants coming to Poland had peaked at more than 9,000 people. This immigration was mainly a result of their fear of isolation following the inscription of the new Schengen border in Eastern Poland; and of the dangerous socio-political and precarious economic circumstances in the Northern Caucasus. In Lublin, most of the Chechen and Ingush immigrants live in a state- rented accommodation centre, located in the deprived neighborhood of Bronowice. By looking into the narratives and daily practices of the immigrants, I aim to discover how experience of oppression and violence and current insecurities, impinge on the lives of these people, and influence the ways they approach their past, present, and future. The presentation aims to contribute, by way of a 'case study', to the broader discourse on commonalities and differences in fieldwork practices in Eastern Europe.
Paper short abstract:
Transformation of Psychiatry from institutionalized to community care occurred in different periods and has been supported by different discourses in the Western and Central/Eastern Europe (1970´, 1990´ resp.). This paper aims to analyze the presuppositions, conditions and actual outcomes of these reforms, based on ethnographic and comparative historical research.
Paper long abstract:
The era of late state socialism in Central/Eastern Europe has been described as a time of a timeless (V. Havel), whose history might be written in terms of what has not happened in comparison to what has happened in the West. The paper examines "what has not happened" in transformation of Psychiatry from institutional to community care. Unlike in the West, where de-institutionalization began in 1960´ partially as a result of criticism of social control role of Psychiatry by leftist intellectuals and anti-psychiatry movement, in C/E Europe this reform has been proposed since 1990´ as a way of dealing with the legacy of the past in the form of institutionalized social exclusion through newly established NGOs, as well as a proof of adherence to human rights by the state - necessary condition for accession of the EU. The paper aims to compare the presumptions, conditions, and actual outcomes of these movements in different social contexts, based ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Czech Republic and comparative historical research of respective reforms in other Western and Central/Europe countries.