From the back cover:
Postsocialism presents a range of anthropological analyses of the new social order. The view "from below," obtained through intensive fieldwork, opens up new understanding of the postsocialist condition and the extent to which one dominant ideology has been replaced by another. The forcible imposition of socialist rule destroyed the integrity of many communities and individual lives; the impact of its demise has also been shattering for millions of citizens in postsocialist Eurasia. Beneath the changes, anthropological analysis brings out significant continuities, both in values and in actual behavior. Time was not"frozen" during the two or three generations of socialist rule. Rather, the contours of postsocialist society are being shaped by a continuous stream of evolving institutions and practices, which emerges only slowly from the valley of socialism. The term postsocialist will remain pertinent so long as the ideals, ideologies, and practices of socialism are perceived to provide a meaningful (albeit increasingly mythical) reference point for understanding people's present condition.
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Postsocialism as a Topic of Anthropological Investigation
Chris Hann, Caroline Humphrey, Katherine Verdery
i. Farewell to the socialist ‘other’
Chris Hann
ii. Does the category 'postsocialist' still make sense?
Caroline Humphrey
iii. Whither postsocialism?
Katherine Verdery
Part One: Social Capital, Trust and Legitimacy
2. The Advantages of Being Collectivized: cooperative farm managers in the
postsocialist economy
Martha Lampland
3. Economic Crisis and Ritual Decline in Rural Eastern Europe
Gerald Creed
4. The Social Production of Mistrust
Christian Giordano and Dobrinka Kostova
5. Retreat to the household?: gendered domains in post-socialist Poland
Frances Pine
6. The Unmaking of An East-Central European Working Class
David Kideckel
7. Deprivation, the Roma and ‘the underclass’
Michael Stewart
8. Intolerant Sovereignties and ‘Multi-Multi’ Protectorates:
competition over religious sites and (in)tolerance in the Balkans
Robert Hayden
9.Withdrawing from the Land: social and spiritual crisis in the indigenous
Russian Arctic
Piers Vitebsky
10. Remnants of Revolution in China
Stefan Feuchtwang
11. Rethinking Chinese Consumption: social palliatives and the rhetorics
of transition in postsocialist China
Kevin Latham
12. How far do analyses of post-socialism travel? : the case of Central
Asia
Deniz Kandiyoti
13. ‘Eurasia’, Ideology and the Political Imagination in Provincial
Russia
Caroline HumphreyPart Five: Democracy Export and Global Civil Society
14. Seeding Civil Society
Ruth Mandel
15. Beyond Transition: rethinking elite configurations in the Balkans
Steven Sampson
16. Afterword: globalism and postsocialist prospects
Don Kalb
Index
This book derives from a conference titled ‘Actually-existing post-socialisms’, held in Halle in November 2000. Together with the meeting of specialists on the Russian north immediately preceding it, the papers from which are being published separately, this was the first major conference of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, founded in the previous year. The Institute is located in the former East Germany and investigations of the postsocialist world have high priority in our research agenda. We aim not only to show specialists in other subjects that anthropology can contribute to the study of contemporary social transformations, but also to demonstrate to anthropologists the pertinence of such studies for other concerns of the discipline. Vast regions of Europe and Asia have been relatively neglected in the dominant anthropological traditions and their integration is long overdue.
Since most of our own staff only took up their positions in 2000, it was too soon for us to present results of our new fieldwork projects concerning postsocialist property relations (for details see www.eth.mpg.de). Rather, we were treated to a feast by distinguished external scholars, who were invited to present examples of their own recent work and simultaneously to address more general themes and review the current ‘state of play’ across a wide range of topics and countries. All have carried out fieldwork in the postsocialist years, usually among people whom they knew well under the ancien régime, and they were encouraged to set this work in wider contexts. The outcome is a volume in which micro-level insights into particular processes of transformation are combined with an insistence on the more general validity of an anthropological approach, complementing the perspectives of other disciplines. The distinctive character of this approach cannot be reduced to any one body of theory or methods. The authors draw eclectically on diverse intellectual traditions, ranging from the classical sociologists to postcolonialism, from political theory to psychotherapy. The nature of their fieldwork is also extremely diverse. Yet certain themes and issues recur throughout the volume and the chapters are brought together by a common sensibility, a concern to understand how momentous social transformations affect the social relations and life-worlds of postsocialist citizens. This is often coupled with scepticism towards current ‘blueprints’ for change, which echoes the scepticism that many of those citizens themselves developed through their bitter experiences with the social engineers of socialism. The volume will serve as a guide to the field for many years to come, and perhaps inaugurate a new era in which the concepts of transition and postsocialism will have to be replaced by terms that are equally pertinent in other parts of the world - including the so-called developed countries.
Of course the coverage falls short of being comprehensive. First, though the Institute is also interested in the impact of socialism elsewhere in the world, it was decided for pragmatic reasons on this occasion to restrict comparisons to Eurasia. Even so, some large countries (Vietnam and Mongolia as well as Germany and Ukraine) are regrettably missing. China does figure, though its path away from socialism has been highly distinctive. It is worth signaling that socialism, a Eurasian product, for a short period brought a remarkably uniform social organization to most parts of the continent. This unity may now be receding; but at a time when the most powerful politicians in Western Europe are preoccupied with a very limited eastwards expansion of their club, it is important that anthropologists address issues at the Eurasian level.
A second significant deficiency in our coverage is the absence of the ‘local scholars’, the many who practise some form of anthropological enquiry in their own country, and on whose support and cooperation most external researchers crucially depend. The Halle meeting featured a good sample of the recent work by westerners, some of it carried out with local partners; but, again for pragmatic reasons, it was not possible on this occasion to open up to include many local anthropologists (who may or may not trade under this name), or to analyze the relations between internal and external researchers. We acknowledged this deficit by asking Yulian Konstantinov (Bulgaria) and Mihály Sárkány (Hungary) to lead a final, very productive session of discussion at the meeting; and we shall endeavour to do better on future occasions.
The structure of the volume differs significantly from that of the conference and I am grateful to all contributors for their cooperation during the editorial process. Chapter One consists of revisions of the remarks made by myself, Caroline Humphrey and Katherine Verdery at an opening ‘round table’ discussion, which problematized the concept of ‘postsocialist’. I have expanded my own section of this chapter to include many more references to recent anthropological work (by no means a full literature review) and to the contents of this volume. Further brief discussion of the chapters is provided at the beginning of each section.
It remains for me to acknowledge the authorities of the Franckesche Stiftungen and the Martin Luther University, who kindly allowed us to use their meeting rooms (we do not yet have suitable facilities of our own); and to thank my colleagues, students and support staff at the Institute, who have all played a huge role in the organization of the conference and in the production of this volume.
Chris Hann
Halle, April 2001