For anyone who has ever wondered just what do researchers do at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (MPISA), this book provides an answer. It seems that those folk concentrating on the anthropology of postsocialist agrarian economies are doing terrific work. As the first volume of a new series spearheaded and introduced by Chris Hann, the fifteen essays that comprise the book should leave readers eagerly awaiting the next such publication. Many anthropologists familiar with political economy approaches to Eurasian ethnography certainly know Hann's oeuvre that deals mainly with rural Hungary, based on his fieldwork since the 1980s. And since joining MPISA several years ago, Hann obviously has provided spirited intellectual leadership for young scholars wanting to explain and account for postsocialist worlds that appeared unable or unwilling to integrate easily into the globalizing fold we know as post-Cold War capitalism.
In organizing a coherent compilation, Hann asks all contributors to re-visit Karl Kautsky's 1899 work Die Agrarfrage, hence the book's title. Now, lest the would-be reader baulk at going on with the task of digesting this tome given this potentially less-than-engaging theme to organize ethnography (Perish the thought that economic considerations in anthropology could ever be boring!), Hann takes pains to explain why Kautsky's pre-socialist ruminations make good sense in light of the present situation÷to wit, because the idea incorporates varying elements of culture centered on agricultural productivity. Thus Kautsky serves to make economically-minded anthropologists holistic in analyzing the agrarian places they study in the postsocialist present.
Nineteen scholars covering parts of the postsocialist world from East Germany to Ethiopia participate in this volume. It seems both virtue and, only occasionally, vice that the scholars are given a sort of free rein to explore topics in depth. In other words, some of the essays stretch out over a good 40 pages, such as Eidson's and Milligan's on the growing entrepreneurialism of East Germany, and several others top out at more than 30 pages. This reviewer thinks, however, that there are no wasted or waste-of-time, more accurately, essays in this book. Slightly curious, on the other hand, is the geographical layout categorization of the essays. Logically enough, the book is arranged from West to East so that our final essays concentrate on Circum-Polar peoples of Sibera and the Russian Far East. Odd I feel is inclusion of essays on China and Ethiopia, respectively, although I enjoyed the particular arguments and writing of both Brandstadter (China) and Wolde Gossa (Ethiopia). I don't so much take issue with the fact that China nominally is still socialist and that Ethiopia had an experience of socialism that lasted something on the order of a half-generation (1975-1990) because both authors address these issues. But more to the point, why are other parts of the postsocialist, such as Yemen, Mozambique, or Vietnam, excluded? What I'm really saying is that inclusion of East Asia and East Africa strikes me as incongruous. Be that as it may, it is really a minor complaint because readers gain so much from reading these essays that I consider the book one of the finest ethnographic achievements with regard to rural postsocialist settings.
All kinds of thematic ideas are expressed to indicate why numerous development plans or predictions for these peoples have alternatively succeeded and/or failed in improving upon the problem-ridden socialist era, e.g. generational differences with regard to private property (Cartwright), kinship relations (Ziker and Brandstadter), labor relations involving reciprocity (Leutloff-Grandits and Gambold Miller and heady), lack of equity with regard to micro-credit allocation (Torsello), and differentiation among land allotments available (Kaneff and Yalcin-Heckman), etc.. Moreover, few of these authors seem to tackle the issues from one of committed ideology, meaning that they do a tremendous job of considering everyday issues and elements of cultural life that frankly elude development planners who have little intimate knowledge of rural life and, therefore, cannot possibly predict how rationally structured plans for transforming economies will go awry.
Great sensitivity and concern for both postsocialism's peculiarities and the plight of many peoples shines through in most of these essays, and I would underline Hann and Sarkany, Gray, and King's essays among others. As I read the aforementioned, I could feel myself becoming emotionally involved with various situations being discussed–a sure sign of the authors' passion for and engagement with people and issues in their respective settings. Issues of historical depth and the adaptations that people have made and are making despite the degree to which any of us necessarily are ideologically committed to a given system are brought out in most thought-provoking ways by Eidson and Milligan and Stammler and Ventsel.
By examining core concepts such as ownership and property, the authors of this compilation present us with the kinds of details and nuanced understandings that were pioneered by the likes of Creed, Grant, Hann, Humphrey, Kideckel, Swain and Verdery, and that now show us precisely why serious fieldwork marks the crucible for understanding why Western planners and others have had an extremely confusing time of making new models work. This book also gives us pause to think not only how diverse socialism was from country to country and culture to culture but also just how much diversity may exist now in a single country, whether it concerns matters of ethnicity or lifestyle differences owing to simple town and country divides.
Simply put, this weighty book of 450-plus pages makes indispensable reading for anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and development workers (government, NGO, etc.) concerned with the rural postsocialist world. I might say that one cannot afford not to read it, but I'd rather stress how much one will benefit from reading it as well as enjoy the book.