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- Convenors:
-
Caterina Borelli
(Università Ca' Foscari)
Fabio Mattioli (The University of Melbourne)
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- Chair:
-
Katherine Verdery
(CUNY)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V315
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 11 July, -, -, Thursday 12 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
The panel focuses on post-socialist societies, exploring not only the violence of transition but also the productive moments whereby new solidarities are elaborated. By not focusing on a specific region, the panel aims at discussing the future(s) of the concept of post-socialism.
Long Abstract:
This panel focuses on so-called post-socialist societies. In the last two decades, anthropologists have underlined the problems posed by transitions from socialism. Far from being an untroubled one-way process, transition has often carried with it profound instability, if not chaos. Many authors have stressed how the vagaries of the new market economy have had a disruptive effect on previous social relations, institutions and networks. Seeing the uncertainty and unpredictability of everyday life in post-socialist societies, anthropologists have described transition as a violent process of restructuring socialist society - a theme easily forgotten by western "transitology".
This panel sets out to expand such contributions, exploring transitions as productive moments. While recognizing the common experience of harsh transformation, we focus rather on the creative ways people inhabit their new situation. We examine the multiple paths through which people reconfigure the socialist past in alternative strategies for the present. We look at the new forms of solidarity that have been patched together during the transition, i.e. political actions, networks of informal economy, collective expressions of many-sided sensibilities. Because "postsocialism" is no longer a region-specific condition, we aim at generating a wider debate about its own "post" - under the rubric of the new: new forms of social cohesion, contestation and organization of civil society; alternative visions and practices of politics; emergent meanings of sociality, authority, and leadership. Looking at transitional chaos in its creative aspects, the panel explores the way the "first post-socialist generations" reshape the prior order in pathways towards the future.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 11 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses experiences of postsocialist transformation in rural Poland. It addresses three issues: it describes people’s strategies of coping with change and uncertainty, it shows how those relate to the mainstream discourse on (post)socialism and it asks whether such coping strategies should be interpreted as specific for postsocialism.
Paper long abstract:
My paper aims at discussing experiences of postsocialist transformation in rural Poland. It is based on a yearly ethnographic fieldwork, carried in a peripheral region in Southern Poland. Its inhabitants face today the problem of unemployment and instability, as not only were the state-owned farms closed but the new political-economic order and Poland's accession to the European Union meant a radical re-shaping of the agriculture. Exploring people's narratives on socialism and their assessment of the present-day developments, the paper puts forward three, strongly entangled, arguments.
First, it describes a range of 'coping strategies' that local people develop while dealing with new challenges and uncertainty. Particularly, it focuses on discursive tools, such as jokes and mockery at the new system as well as nostalgic narratives about the past. Following Berdahl (1999) and Verdery and Burawoy (1999), it approaches nostalgia as a novel strategy which enable people to deal with ongoing changes. Second, the paper argues that 'coping strategies' entail both a rejection of the mainstream discourse - which represents the socialist period in black-and-white colours - as well as a creative appropriation of that discourse. It demonstrates that local inhabitants disapprove of the simplistic dismantling and condemnation of the socialist system, highlighting its positive aspects and continuing to draw on those in everyday life. Third, the paper asks to what extent described practices and discourses should be seen as 'specific' for (post)socialist period and to what extent they account for long-term strategies, developed through centuries by the inhabitants of marginalized areas.
Paper short abstract:
Besides providing incomes necessary to complement low state salaries the informal economy in Havana also requires different abilities than state-employment. I show how these are both celebrated as admirable qualities and feared as they threaten solidarity.
Paper long abstract:
Since formal salaries were unable to fulfil household needs, state employees in Havana had to find ways to diversify their income-generating activities, often venturing into the informal economy. Besides generating higher incomes the informal economy required entrepreneurial abilities such as creativity, flexibility, determination, wit and guts. While being celebrated as positive traits they were, at the same time, feared. If spiralling out of control they were seen as threatening both the social and moral fabric of society through scams and grifting.
This resonates with how Emily Martin speaks about the qualities sought in a successful person within business or finance in the US and Europe. These qualities, which she argues resonates with how the manic phase in manic depression is described, are seen as both the ticket to success and as dangerous and constantly on the brink of madness. Martin relates them to an image of the self as a mini-corporation.
When devising a living in the informal economy people in Havana are, in fact, mini-corporations: one-person businesses looking to make a profit. At the same time the abilities needed to do so are constantly controlled through everyday negotiations by appealing to social and moral values. What is being threatened is not, as in Martin's ethnography, the mental sanity of the person and the rationality of capitalism itself but the social fabric of solidarity. The purpose and outcome of everyday moral negotiations was, then, to find economic strategies that were good in both an economic and a moral sense.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores life stories of women workers who have spent their lives working in hard industry. By problematizing transition and looking at women working force this paper aims at questioning the ongoing imaginary of alternative economies, the meaning of hope and despair.
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores life stories of women workers who have spent their lives working in hard industry - a steel work company based in a provincial town of Sisak, Croatia. The idea of insecurity has a pervasive influence on lives of those women who have survived war, transition and economic challenges of the 90's and have met the uncertainties of economic decline that lasted for 20 years. During a time span of 20 years those women have seen their factory being crushed by war and internal socialist economic crisis, sold to the Russian investors at the beginning of 2001, after the first bankruptcy, retaken by the Government to be handled as socially sensible issue, and than resold to a USA- based steel factory in 2007. An intensive investment in the last four years has started a challenging process of factory reconstruction. The American owner has announced closing of the factory in the October of 2011.
By problematizing transition as space/time of insecurity and looking at women working force as of destined to be taken advantage of in the economies of social exclusion, this paper aims at questioning the ongoing imaginary of alternative economies. In order to see the process of hoping & despairing as a contingent metaphor this paper aims at answering the question what hope and despair mean to those woman today, when they face another row of financial cuts, collective redundancy, as well as governmental palliative promises in providing social security to citizens.
Paper short abstract:
We will argue that the post-soviet Shamanism in Tuva (South Siberia) could be seen as a creative response to the idioms of control and power elaborated in USSR and Post-Soviet Russia. Shamanism evolves through the bricolage of concepts, both at the level of the organisation of practice and in the exercise of authority.
Paper long abstract:
The relationship between Shamanism and the State has been object of debate in anthropology (for ex. Hamayon 1994, Humphrey 1994). We will argue that the post-soviet Shamanism in Tuva (South Siberia) could be seen as a creative response to the idioms of control and power elaborated in USSR and Post-Soviet Russia. Shamanism evolves through the bricolage of concepts, both at the level of the organisation of ritual practice and in the exercise of new forms of authority.
Rather than going back to the local pre-Soviet traditions when the shamans practised alone, the Tuvan Shamanism has developed at the beginning of the 1990s a network of "societies" that regulates the practice of the shamans under the control of directors. The emergence of these religious organisations reflects a change of perspective in the relationship with the State. Inherited from the oppressive system of control on the spiritual life of the URSS, they are used today by the shamans to obtain the support of the State and to establish links with other important partners such as foreign neoshamanic networks or touristic organisations.
The network of societies is also structured by power struggles for the control of the field and its resources. Through the case study of a transfer of power we will see how the new forms of leadership feed on idioms and concepts originally strange to Shamanism, borrowed from the academic or political discourse: "Shamanism as a traditional confession", "the supreme Shaman", "the vertical of power".
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Ismaili Muslims living in Tajik Ishkashim use the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) to frame their present as ‘socialist’ but ‘post-Soviet’. By framing AKDN as a redistributive center akin to the former Soviet state, Ishkashimi Ismailis attempt to stabilize the economic uncertainties of free-market capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how Ismaili Muslims from Tajik Ishkashim (Ishkashimis) frame their post-Soviet present as 'socialist' in the face of increasing socio-economic liberalization. One of the strongest advocates of capitalism in Ishkashim is the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a transnational NGO funded by USAID, UNDP and the World Bank amongst others. AKDN enabled the decollectivisation of land in Ishkashim and is attempting to increase efficiency of production so as to make Ishkashimis self-sufficient. Nonetheless, Ishkashimis see AKDN as a socializing force akin to the former Soviet state.
Ishkashimis remember the principles of 'redistribution' and a 'strong centre' as having characterized Soviet socialism. Moreover, Ishkashimis experienced Soviet socialism as an 'economy of giving', not an 'economy of shortage', since Ishkashim's strategic location bordering Afghanistan attracted unreciprocated Soviet investments. I suggest that Ishkashimis re-frame the capitalist principles advocated by AKDN as a redistributing center within the context of an 'economy of giving'. To demonstrate, I will draw on Ishkashimis' experiences of both AKDN's humanitarian aid, provided during the 1990s Tajik civil war, and its ongoing development projects, many of which strive to incorporate Ishkashimis into a market economy. For Ishkashimis, AKDN's founder, Ishkashimis' religious leader, is a paternalist figure who uses AKDN to redistribute wealth from affluent nations and 'give' to Ishkashimis when the Tajik state fails to do so.
Ishkashimis experienced post-Soviet change through a violent civil war. But they can numb the violent 'transition' to capitalism by using their newfound solidarity with AKDN to deny that they are post-socialist.
Paper short abstract:
Liberal and nationalist NGOs in Serbia are two scenes of associational life emergent in a relationship of mutual constitution with the 'ever-transitional' state. Their 'fantasies of the state and society' articulate social antagonism about the essential meanings of a democratic polity.
Paper long abstract:
Liberal Western-supported NGOs seemed to be the victors of the 2000 regime change in Serbia and the last decade of (unsteady) 'democratisation' and 'Europeanisation.' This self-professed 'Other Serbia' of urban middle class and intellectuals has been locally equated with 'civil society.' However, in the general discontent of ever-transitional Serbia, nationalist groups seem competent to mobilise popular support and influence formal politics. The literature has labeled such groups as 'uncivil society,' but interestingly, they adopt many NGO practices. They present themselves and sometimes act as populist and revolutionary national fronts opposed to the state, but most of them have university-educated middle class leaders and strive to participate in state-sanctioned institutional politics. Drawing on sixteen months of fieldwork in Belgrade and other sites, I propose to address these apparent paradoxes by conceptualising 'civil' and 'uncivil' societies as structurally similar but ideologically different kinds of the plurality of 'civil societies.' I define civil societies as scenes of associational life, i.e. types and social complexes of associations as classified by actors themselves, which emerge in a relationship of mutual constitution with the state and which generate divergent 'fantasies of the state' and 'fantasies of society.' I will show that the ideas of tolerance and civility are variously developed in the two civil societies rather than fully present in one and absent in the other, but more importantly that different key themes inform their fantasies of the state and society. 'Civil' and 'uncivil' society thus channel and serve as a model for social antagonism in post-conflict Serbia about the polity's essential meanings while reproducing a 'messy' democracy.
Paper short abstract:
My paper will look at the dynamics of national and religious solidarities during the post-Soviet transition in Estonian Tatar community, focusing on the different fractions in the community and the growing role of Estonian Muslim Congregation.
Paper long abstract:
In my paper, I will look at the recent history of Estonian Tatar community as an example of different basis for solidarity during the post-soviet transition period. Tatars have been a small, but recognizable minority at the Estonian territory since the 19th century. Many new Tatars came to Estonia during the Soviet period. There are some discrepancies between the "old Estonian Tatars" and "Soviet Tatars". The first group has by now integrated with Estonians and differentiate themselves from "Soviet Tatars" mainly on the basis of their origin, dialect and customs (the "old Estonian Tatars" mostly came from one specific region). In the end of 1980s and in 1990s the Tatar society was re-established and contacts with Tatars in Finland as well as Russia flourished. What kinds of solidarities and sensibilities have motivated the people, who actively organize and participate in the life of the local Tatar community? Recently, it seems that the Tatar society and public celebrations of Tatar festivals have remained important only for a small group of mainly elderly Tatars. However, Muslim festivals are celebrated by the Estonian Islamic congregation, which is a larger and more open community that unites Tatars and other traditionally Muslim minorities in Estonia as well as new converts. Thus, it can be suspected that the solidarity based on Tatar nationalist sensibilities has lost some importance, as religious Muslim identity is becoming a more important basis for solidarity.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I analyze two mechanisms of migration from Romania and the corresponding effects. I deal with migration from regions where the socialist industry collapsed after 1990, producing traumatic social and economic repercussions.
Paper long abstract:
International migration represented one of the main strategies Romanians have used in the past twenty years in order to face impoverishment, rising unemployment, and changing economic relations. Despite the magnitude of this phenomenon and the strong economic effects it produces for the Romanian society, not many studies were carried out to address the effects of migration for the Romanian society. In this paper I analyze two main migration mechanisms and its corresponding effects. I deal with migration from regions where the socialist industry collapsed after 1990, producing traumatic social and economic repercussions. In the first case I researched ethnic Romanians from the northern Transylvania, who used their kinship ties in order to migrate to Milan, Italy, and to adapt to an unregulated labor market. In the second case I dealt with ethnic Croatians from the Western side of Romania, who received Croatian citizenship and migrated to Croatia and later to Austria.
In both cases migrants maintained strong transnational involvement in their origin locale, helping their families by sending remittances. In both cases also people see migration as a profitable activity offering economic stability and a predictable future. However, the effects of migration are rather uneven. Migration produces social cleavages among Romanians, where kinship was the main mechanism of selection and social success, but no detectable tensions among Croatians, where ethnicity provided equal access to migration.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on Vietnamese migrants in post socialist countries, exploring transnational trading ties after the fall of the Berlin wall. By taking recent critics on methodological nationalism into account, the paper aims at contributing to diversification, mobility, cross border economic practices and market places as sites of encounter in the post-socialist urban landscape.
Paper long abstract:
Prior to the collapse of Communism, hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived in various localities throughout COMECON countries by way of programmes of mutual cooperation and 'socialist solidarity'. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many have become entrepreneurs mostly engaged in wholesaling and retailing. Local markets, increasingly comprised of diverse peoples, play key roles in post-socialist economic development while they transnationally link a variety of geographical and socio-cultural spaces around the world. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with Vietnamese in market places in East Berlin, Praha, Warzawa and Hanoi, this paper addresses the following topics and questions
- processes of diversification and social transformation
Market places are arenas in which people from various backgrounds develop relationships of civility, conviviality and sociability. How do they negotiate social and economic relations in the market?
- mobility and transnational social and economic practices
Already prior to 1989, the global flow of people, goods, money and ideas generated new forms of mobility in socialist countries. What impact do contemporary routes of migration have on the kinds of trade and business and on the flows of money and goods, and how are they manifested in the dynamics of market-places and bazaars?
- bazaars as public places and sites of cultural exchange
Bazaars or open market spaces are simultaneously places of recreation, information-gathering, family festivities, cultural performance and religious activity. When and how were these localities transformed into bazaars and how do they fit into the post-socialist urban landscape?
Paper short abstract:
Cultural industries have become the newest spaces of expropriation, and a focus of polices touting "cultural creativity" as a global competitive advantage. My paper aims to elucidate what these processes mean for a Russian provincial city, its publics, and its "postsocialist condition".
Paper long abstract:
New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/arts/design/27debate.html) made internationally known the ongoing war in the field of cultural productions in the Russian city of Perm. The project of a Moscow galerist to transform a notoriously "provincial" and "untrendy" Russian city into a "cultural capital of Europe" resulted in a high-profile locus of moral/political/aesthetic struggles: federal vs. local vs. global; postmodernist vs. modernist vs. (pre?)modernist; the elites and the "ordinary" citizens; the Soviet and the post-soviet. What is culture, what is its role in people's well-being, and who gets to decide?
Some answers to these questions arose as a part of a contemporary ethnography of Perm focused on the life of thirty-something year olds of median income, some of whom happen to be the producers, and many the dwellers and the (un)voluntary consumers, of the city's new cultural landscape. I identify, arguably, three sides to this ongoing conflict - the Moscow galerist and the "cosmopolitan" local intelligentsia; the parts of local intelligentsia that oppose the "invaders"; and the publics who are not actively engaged in the production of culture in Perm. The latter have to rely on the other two (or the ethnographer) to convey and articulate their needs and desires. Supplementing interviewing and observation with the study of the media, this paper attempts to discuss the contestations - and solidarities - in Perm's cultural wars through the analysis of the publics and their modes of engagement with the symbolic, engagement which plays itself out within a politically-laden discursive field of "provinciality" and "boredom".
Paper short abstract:
The paper shows the twofold nature of Warsaw’ transitional chaos: how the generalized notion of chaos blurs the real existing power clash and how the social and material potential of bottom-up urban development may and should be revealed to create new patterns or urbanization.
Paper long abstract:
As Stanilov puts it, chaos was 'the Zeitgeist of the transformation period'. However, the experience of a messy public sphere was condemned in the second decade of transition focused on the re-creation of tidy and 'European' public space. It is no coincidence that these noble claims went hand in hand with the growing domination of global capitalist forces against bottom-up transitional strategies. Stalls were replaced with malls, kiosks with high-rises, and - last but not least - the enthusiasm of bottom-up entrepreneurship with growing frustration.
I want to reveal the twofold nature of transitional chaos. First, I claim that there is no 'general' chaos. In the universe of uneven urban development the versions of chaos are also uneven. A generic notion of chaos blurs the really existing clash of specific powers. Actors producing the most tangible version of chaos (stalls, informal constructions) are all too easily blamed for urban development problems caused by the domination of other powers, hidden behind the façade of urban order (e.g. clean office buildings). Second, using examples from Warsaw I show how particular 'chaotic' phenomena from the transition period can be re-used to create truly new patterns of urban development. Being both a researcher and an activist, I see a real challenge in pursuing what Walter Benjamin would call 'a redemptive analysis' of the materiality of urban transition, in which the potential of bottom up social energy would be redeemed rather than lost in the process of post-transitional urban restructuring.