Post-Socialism

Feminism as a Practice of Freedom

by Ľubica Kobová

In Grzybek, Agniezska (Ed.). 2009. Women in times of change, 1989-2009 (pp. 124-137). Warszawa: Heinrich Böll Stiftung Regional Office Warsaw.

The essay describes three different ways of constructing women as political subjects in post-1989 politics in... more The essay describes three different ways of constructing women as political subjects in post-1989 politics in Slovakia. At the same time it attempts at a feminist reappropriation of the concept of freedom as a resistance strategy.

Drinking with Vova: SME in Ukraine between informality and illegality

by Abel Polese

This is going to be a chapter in a collection Jeremy Morris and myself are editing on informal economic practices in post-socialism

This chapter is intended to illustrate practices on the boundary between legality and illegality in order
to shed... more This chapter is intended to illustrate practices on the boundary between legality and illegality in order
to shed a different light on some of those engaging in diverse transactions. Challenging the vision of a "culture of corruption" (Miller et al 2001) and that “no discount” should be applied to corrupt practices (Papava and Khaduri 2001), the starting question of this chapter is: what makes a practice “corrupt” or
illegal? In this respect I suggest the need to contextualise and de-normativise illegal practices, since they depend on both social and legal norms. From a juridical standpoint a law is a law, but the value and applicability of a law is ultimately decided by people in social practice. What if there is a law and
the state is unable to enforce control or punish anyone because a substantial number of citizens do not follow it? There is a growing body of literature challenging the very significance of a written law in a context where other rules may apply. For instance, Wanner has remarked how a new moral order may
be applied to some spheres of Ukrainian life where the state’s protection is felt to be lacking. How illegal or immoral is it to try to bribe a court if the same court is issuing an order on the basis of false evidence produced against you? (Wanner 2005)

The present chapter raises questions about the validity of international reports and policy analysis on Ukraine, and possibly on the rest of the former Soviet world, that see illegal practices only as a social evil to eradicate. This is the position of a number of strands of developmentalist thought which
uncritically reject possible alternatives (Nederveen Pieterse 2006), positing that it is only a matter of time before transitional countries will adopt a functioning neoliberal model. In contrast to this, it has been argued that that monetary transactions do not encompass or explain economic activity – this is evident from the work of the growing school of diverse economies (Community Economies Collective 2001, Gibson Graham 1996, 2008). In addition, economic effectiveness might not mean the end of non-market oriented transactions (Williams 2005), which may also serve to partially challenge the de-personalisation of power relations in the labour market and the separation between the social and economic sphere predicted by Polanyi (1946, see also Hann and Hart 2009). Empirical evidence has showed that ‘success’ may also be measured by satisfaction of spiritual obligations, being active in social life (Pardo 1996) and that even the meaning of money differs depending on the social and
economic norms of a society (Parry and Bloch 1989).

L'enjeu de l'égalite hommes-femmes au prisme de l'élargissement à l'est de l'UE

by Maxime Forest

A comparative analysis of the Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies in Central and Eastern Europe, with a... more A comparative analysis of the Europeanization of Gender Equality Policies in Central and Eastern Europe, with a sociological focus on practices and the logics of actors.

Re-cognizing the post-Soviet condition: the documentary turn in contemporary art in the Baltic States

by Harry Weeks

Studies in Eastern European Cinema, February 2010.

Contemporary art in the Baltic States has recently undergone a ‘documentary turn’, part of a global tendency towards... more Contemporary art in the Baltic States has recently undergone a ‘documentary turn’, part of a global tendency towards the use of documentary aesthetics and formal structures in art. In the Baltic context, this has been the result of a desire amongst artists to both recognize and re-cognize the post-Soviet condition, a subject that was consciously avoided by most artists in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the 1990s. Re-cognition has involved an attempt to de-flatten and humanize the post-Soviet condition, which, although a valid framework for the theoretical discussion of Eastern Europe, has a number of shortcomings. This re-cognitive tendency has derived from a shift from ‘hot’ to ‘cold’ memory, the product of distance and detachment from the Soviet past and the rise of a new generation of artists, who were not active participants in the Soviet Baltic Republics. Artists have utilized documentary, as well as ethnographic and pedagogical strategies in order to achieve this re-cognition.

Technonatures Introduction White Wilbert

by Damian White

An attempt to survey and think through the political implications of hybridity discourses such as Latour and Haraway for environmental politics. This is the introductory chapter from D.White and C.Wilbert (Eds) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-first CenturyISBN13: 978-1-55458-150-4, 2009.

Lots of other really interesting cuts in the book from Erik Swyngedouw, Sarah Whatmore, Mike Michael, Steve Hinchliffe and others ...check it out at Available from http://www.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/white-wilbert.shtml

Neo Rauch: post-socialist vision, collective memories

by Annette Hamilton

Published in:

Gerhard Fischer and Florian Vassen (eds),
Collective Creativity. Collaborative Work in the Sciences, Literature and the Arts. Amsterdam and New York, NY: Rodopi, 2011. XXV, 368 pp. 2011, pp. 177-189

This paper examines the recent upsurge in popularity of the art of Neo Rauch and others of the New Leipzig School... more This paper examines the recent upsurge in popularity of the art of Neo Rauch and others of the New Leipzig School among transnational elites and considers the basis of this art movement in the context of traditional East German socialist representational painting and the decomposition of collective  imageries of socialism.

Hospitality, Culture and Regeneration: Urban Decay, Entrepreneurship and the" Ruin" Bars of Budapest

by Peter Lugosi

This paper was published as: Lugosi, P., Bell, D. and Lugosi, K., 2010. Hospitality, Culture and Regeneration: Urban decay, entrepreneurship and the "ruin" bars of Budapest. Urban Studies, Vol. 47, No. 14, pp. 3079-3101.

This paper considers the relationships between hospitality, culture and urban regeneration through an examination of... more This paper considers the relationships between hospitality, culture and urban regeneration through an examination of rom (ruin) venues, which operate in dilapidated buildings in Budapest, Hungary. The paper reviews previous work on culture and urban regeneration in order to locate the role of hospitality within emerging debates. It subsequently interrogates the evolution of the rom phenomenon and demonstrates how, in this context, hospitality thrives because of social and physical decay in urban locations, how operators and entrepreneurs exploit conflicts among various actors involved in regeneration, and how hospitality may be mobilised purposefully in the regeneration process. The paper demonstrates how networked entrepreneurship maintains these operations and how various forms of cultural production are entangled and mobilised in the venues’ hospitality propositions.

Urban resilience and the re-emergence of cultural patterns

by Danielle Labbé

co-authored with Patrick Marmen, Doan The Trung, and Myriam Blais

The Ghosts of the Past: 20 years after the Fall of Communism in Europe.

by marta rabikowska

M. Rabikowska / Communist and Post-Communist Studies 42 (2009) 165e179

LINKING NORMLESSNESS AND VALUE CHANGE IN THE POST-COMMUNIST WORLD.

by Christopher S. Swader

The apparent realities of the communist dystopia lead to specific expectations from the transition to capitalism: the... more The apparent realities of the communist dystopia lead to specific expectations from the transition to capitalism: the replacement of communism should cause not only a boon in human happiness, but also a resurgence of social life. Two types of observations in the past 20 years challenge these expectations. First, people from former-communist countries are often nostalgic and pessimistic when discussing changes in social relationships, friendships, family, and social engagement. Many lament the perceived decay of relationships due to a claimed growth in egoism, materialism, working hours, and moving abroad. Such stories suggest that people may have come to devalue the interpersonal social sphere during the transition years. In addition to these changes in values, there is evidence for enhanced normlessness. An example is the steep increase in murder, suicide, alcoholism, and juvenile delinquency in many post-socialist societies. However, these two observations, changing values and social disorder, have not been fully integrated, whether theoretically or empirically. As a first step toward alleviating this, the present article connects both of these changes to the reintroduction of a capitalist economic structure. Post-communist social disorder, such as deviance, can be explained if the free-market transformation weakened social values and thereby undermined the informal social control which depends on these values. This article will, in two steps, empirically investigate this proposition. First, it will ask whether the transformation to capitalist culture has resulted in individualized values that challenge informal social control. Second, this new latency of sociality will be linked to normlessness.

Adaptation As 'Selling Out'; Capitalism and the Commodification of Values In Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Germany

by Christopher S. Swader

in Journal of International Relations and Development, 12, 387-395.

The great transition: The dynamics of market transitions and the case of Russia, 1991–1995

by Jeff Hass

Individualna sećanja i politike kolektivnog pamćenja u postkomunističkom stanju

by milan subotic

Treći program Radio Beograda, III-IV 2009, 170-180

Individual recollections and the politics of collective memory in the postcommunist condition

more Individual recollections and the politics of collective memory in the postcommunist condition


Summary
Intended as a contribution to the discussion on the relation between history and memory, the paper tackles the status of the past in the recollections of individuals living in present-day post-communism. The author starts from the premise that the socialist politics of memory relied on a master narrative which provided a firm “social frame” for constructing and articulating autobiographical narratives. Once this master narrative was gone, the past became more uncertain than the future, while collective and individual memories had to be reconstructed. Dubbing this situation the “postcommunist condition”, the author discusses the process of the „nationalization of the past“as a key feature of the new „politics of memory“– a set of practices and norms regulating collective memory. Since it is usually based on an essentialist understanding of collective identity, the postcommunist politics of memory is in its rigidity comparable to the one from the communist period. People belonging to the generations socialized in the previous system are facing the task of redefining and reconstructing their own past in order to harmonize “communicative memory” with the (newly established) “cultural memory”. In the concluding section of the paper different strategies for fulfilling this task are outlined – from “amnesia” to “nostalgia”.

The Crisis of the Post-Soviet Teaching Profession In the Caucasus and Central Asia

by Iveta Silova

Silova, I. (2009). The crisis of the post-Soviet teaching profession in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Research in Comparative and International Education, 4(4), 367-384.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the teaching profession has begun to erode in the... more Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the teaching profession has begun to erode in the Caucasus and Central Asia as evidenced in such indicators as a teacher shortage, the feminization of the profession, an over-aged teaching force, a low transition rate from teacher education graduation to professional service, and a decrease of enrollment in teacher education programs at colleges and universities. While all of these indicators have been well documented, this article considers another indicator which may signal the low status of the teaching profession – the comparatively low results of centralized university examinations among students entering pre-service teacher education programs compared to more competitive, high-demand higher education programs. Using data from centralized university admission tests in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan for the 2007-08 academic year, the article illustrates that it is the lowest-performing students who are typically entering pre-service teacher education institutions, thus further undermining the prestige of the teaching profession and the quality of education in the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Das Problem der "Unterforschung" des postsowjetischen russischen Ultranationalismus

by Andreas Umland

Russland-Analysen, no. 218 (2011), pp. 16-17.

Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe

by Eckehard Pistrick

co-edited volume with Gretel Schwörer and Nicola Scaldaferri

The edited volume Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe is an attempt to meet the challenges of... more The edited volume Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe is an attempt to meet the challenges of text-based scholarship, to break medial one-dimensionality dictated by textuality and to shift the focus to the aural and visual dimensions of identity in a part of Europe heavily marked by the dynamics of political, cultural and social change, particularly during the last decades. The objective of this endeavour is to examine identity in Southeastern Europe by means of its communication media, specifically that of the photographic image and the sound recording.

How are identities communicated? How are they performed and made physically perceptible? Brought to a point, the primary issue is one of how people perceive themselves and their environment on the basis of communication media, seen through a lens of different disciplines (social anthropology, ethnomusicology, media studies, sociology and history) and methodologies from the point of view of scholars from Southeastern Europe and their Western European colleagues. The book pursues a distinct comparative and historical perspective, examining the media representations from socialist and pre-socialist periods in relation to the role media play in the postsocialist discourse. Another focus is laid on local media representations and their impact on local self-images. This distinct historical and local approach allows new insights into how identities are constructed, performed and negotiated in the light of media, resulting in different forms of interpreting, re-appropriating and re-evaluting the past and traditions. This opens up questions on the role of media in relation to cultural policies and their potential to preserve or to transform local cultural heritage.

The book is also an important contribution to the field of postsocialist studies in anthropology. It sheds a distinct cultural view on postsocialist transformation processes. Through a wide range of examples and first-hand results of basic field research from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania and Slovenia this volume provides an opportunity for a comparative reconsideration of similar phenomena across national borders. It may serve also as a methodological reference work for scholars who are interested in the different ways of how to develop and practice “media reflexivity” in their own field research.


Eckehard Pistrick currently teaches Ethnomusicology at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, with focus on Southeastern Europe. He has co-directed a research project at the same institution on “Aural and Visual Representations of Albanian Identity” and is currently completing his PhD at the Universities of Halle and Paris-Ouest-Nanterre. He is member of the Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie (CREM).

Nicola Scaldaferri is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Milan, Italy. He is also the founder and director of the LEAV - Ethnomusicology and Visual Anthropology Laboratory at the same institution. His research focuses on the music of Southeastern Europe and Southern Italy, as well as on Electroacoustic music. Since 1999 he has conducted extensive research on epic singing traditions and on the Milman Parry Collection at Harvard University. Major publications include Musica arbëreshe in Basilicata (Adriatica, 1994), Musica nel laboratorio elettroacustico (Lim, 1997), Nel paese dei cupa cupa (with Stefano Vaja, Squilibri, 2006) and the collaboration for the documentary Vjesh/Song (2007), realized by Rossella Schillaci.

Gretel Schwörer is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Specialist in the musical traditions of Southeast Asia, her most recent research focuses on media and the multiple dimensions of sound. Another important aspect of her research relates to copyright issues for traditional music.


“What I find so valuable about the volume . . . is its realization in and of a four-part harmony. It is a harmony of theory and ethnography, of media criticism and media practice.”

—Steven Feld, University of New Mexico



Date Of Publication: Jun 2011
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-2930-4
Isbn: 1-4438-2930-7

Celebrating the Imagined Village: Ways of Organizing and Commenting Local Soundscapes and Social Patterns in South Albanian Feasts INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EURO-MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES 2/2009

by Eckehard Pistrick

co-authored with Gerda Dalipaj

Feasts in contemporary South Albania are shaped to a large degree by the impact of mass migration. Migrants as a... more Feasts in contemporary South Albania are shaped to a large degree by the impact of mass migration. Migrants as a community attend feasts massively projecting their particular expectations and nostalgia onto the events. Standing outside of the rural social framework, they tend to idealize their home village as representative of inherited traditions and values as contrasting with their current living situation. For them the feast symbolizes a link between their past and their present.
At the same time, migrants as a social group also challenge the institution of the feast, stimulating discourses about the structure and the aesthetic features embodied in the celebration.

“Celebrating the imagined village – Organizing and Commenting Local Soundscapes and Social Patterns in South Albanian Feasts” in International Journal for Euro-Mediterranean Studies; Issue: Arts and Heritage in the Mediterranean, 2 (2009), 163-191.

Akayev’s Legacy in Kyrgyzstan Proving Difficult to Overcome

by David Gullette

Eurasia Insight - 10 May 2005
(In Russian http://www.eurasianet.org/russian/departments/insight/articles/eav051105aru.shtml)

An article examining the issues that need to be addressed following the ousting of President Askar Akayev in 2005. An article examining the issues that need to be addressed following the ousting of President Askar Akayev in 2005.

Kyrgyzstan: Former Premier Felix Kulov Reemerges on Bishkek’s Political Stage

by David Gullette

Eurasia Insight - 13 April 2010
(In Russian: http://russian.eurasianet.org/node/31071)

Written together with David Trilling, this is an interview with Felix Kulov shortly after the 7 April uprising against... more Written together with David Trilling, this is an interview with Felix Kulov shortly after the 7 April uprising against President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his political intentions.

Kyrgyzstan: components of crisis

by David Gullette

Open Democracy - 28 June 2010

The explosion of violence in southern Kyrgyzstan is the result of social pressures, economic hardship and political... more The explosion of violence in southern Kyrgyzstan is the result of social pressures, economic hardship and political malpractice. The interim government’s constitutional referendum can do little to address these problems.