Page dated:1/30/2

The latest volume of the Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers is a collection of revised and expanded papers culled from the program of the 2001 Soyuz Symposium, "From the Internationale to the Transnational: Repositioning Postsocialist Cultures," held at UC, Berkeley. A key theme in the papers published here is that citizens of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe feel challenged by globalization to redefine progress. Under socialism, the immutable and monolithic quality of the state guided peoples' understandings of progress. Today, progress must be redefined through many endeavors that are responsive to global flows of commodities as well as ideas. For many people portrayed in this volume the question is not whether postsocialist citizens have been truly"globalized," but how they negotiate that globalization. In the course of redefining "progress," new questions, paradoxes and contradictions emerge for citizens. The authors are compelled to join their subjects in reconceiving traditional dichotomies such as public and private as well as East and West, rich and poor, and modern and traditional. The papers in this volume provide at least one collective conclusion: that "progress" is the source of much ambivalence for postsocialist citizens. Political, economic and social processes associated with globalization have produced contradictory, sometimes elusive, and often deeply conflicted ways of pursuing success and survival at all levels of postsocialist life. The rest of the world's speculation about"what comes next?" after Socialism may be over; the conversation between postsocialist subjects and the rest of the world about what is happening has already begun.

Table of Contents

THE PARADOXES OF PROGRESS: GLOBALIZATION AND POSTSOCIALIST CULTURES
(Rachael Stryker, University of California, Berkeley/Jenifer Patico, Duke University)

PUBLIC MEMORY IN RUSSIA: HOW TRANSNATIONAL IS IT?
( Andreas Langenohl, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany)

FROM STATE-DIRECTED NON-DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANIZED GENDER VIOLENCE TO TRANSITION IN VOJVODINA AND SERBIA
(Tatjana Djuric-Kuzmanovic, The Advanced Business School, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia)

LOCAL POLITICS, PERSONAL EMOTIONS: SUPPORT FOR CIVIC ACTION IN SLOVENIA
(Veronica Aplenc, University of Pennsylvania)

LIMNALITY AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY: THE ROMANIAN 'TRANSITION'
(Monica Popescu, University of Pennsylvania)

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, TRANSNATIONAL ACTORS, AND DEMOCRATIZATION: THE CASE OF THE RUSSIAN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
(Laura Henry, UC Berkeley)

BREAKING THE WAVES: VOODOO MAGIC IN THE RUSSIAN CULTURAL ECUMENE
(Galina Lindquist, University of Stockholm, Sweden)

SKA PROBL'EM M/DON UORRI: TRANSIDIOMATIC PRACTICES IN ALBANIA
(Marco Jacquemet, Columbia University / Barnard College)

GLOBALIZATION IN THE POSTSOCIALIST MARKETPLACE: CONSUMER READINGS OF PROGRESS, DECLINE AND DIFFERENCE IN URBAN RUSSIA
(Jenifer Patico, Duke University)

WHEN LOCAL MYTHS MEET GLOBAL REALITY: PREPARING RUSSIA'S ABANDONED CHILDREN FOR INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION
(Olga Tunina, Moscow State University / Rachael Stryker, University of California, Berkeley)

SWEDISH SPACE, 'WESTERN MAGIC,' AND BALTIC AMBITIONS: THE MAKING OF A BUSINESS ELITE IN RIGA, LATVIA
(Anja Timm, London School of Economics/Aberdeen University, UK)

EXILES AT HOME AND ABROAD: BULGARIAN INTELLIGENTSIA IN EMIGRATION
(Maria Stoilkova, UC Berkeley)

'Civilization' and its Insecurities: Traveling Scientists, Global Science, and National Progress in the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok
(Amy Ninetto, University of Virginia)

Preface Excerpts:

As the borders of nations once collectively situated behind the "Iron Curtain" continue to shift, we find that it is not only new geographic borders, but also new and sometimes recycled systems of meaning that are reorganizing populations, resources and politics. This begs many important questions: In light of such immense change, what is happening to the cognitive frameworks through which people understand their social and physical landscapes (on local, national, and global scales)? What new subjectivities are being born of these shifts, and how do they shape the everyday practices through which people engage with globalization? And what is it about the turn away from the forms of political and economic organization associated with state socialism that particularizes these postsocialist experiences of globalization?

The Paradoxes of Progress: Globalization and Postsocialist Cultures, is a collection of revised and expanded papers culled from the program of the 2001 Soyuz Symposium, "From the Internationale to the Transnational: Repositioning Post-Socialist Cultures" that discusses these and other questions. Using a refreshingly emic approach, Eastern European and Russian scholars and informants speak here on issues as far-ranging as the possibilities for civil society at the end of the Cold War to the changing consumer choices, educational opportunities, and demographics associated with postsocialist marketization. In the process, they identify the impact of globalization on such rarely-investigated communities as Moscow's voodoo healers, Slovenian conservationists, hopeful Latvian business students, traveling scientists of the Novisibirsk Akademgorodok and Russian orphanage staff members, just to name a few.

A key theme in the papers presented here is that citizens of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe feel challenged by globalization to redefine progress. Under socialism, the immutable and monolithic quality of the state guided peoples' understandings of progress; ideological emphasis was often placed on the collective well-being of the citizenry. Today, progress must be redefined through many endeavors that are responsive not only to the state, but also to transnational job markets and to global flows of commodities as well as ideas. For many people portrayed in this volume, then, the question is not whether postsocialist citizens have been truly"globalized," but how they negotiate that globalization. By compiling these papers, each of which attends carefully to particular groups, settings and issues, we end up with a variegated, rich account of the rationales involved with postsocialism and globalization. These accounts reflect an awareness that "Transition" is not necessarily understood as unidirectional, but is often experienced and interpreted in contradictory ways. It also comes with an awareness of how various market, political and social forces - local, national, and transnational -- variously intersect in people's lives.

This leads us, however, to another key theme in the papers: in the course of redefining "progress," new questions, paradoxes and contradictions emerge for citizens. The researchers included in this volume must consider what various components of globalization actually mean for people by investigating what new ideals and aspirations emerge, what kinds of constraints these bring, and how people ultimately pursue them. The authors are compelled to join their subjects in reconceiving dichotomies such as public and private as well as East and West, rich and poor, and modern and traditional. They make an allowance for the relevance of such dichotomies, but only as their informants consider their options and loyalties in relation to these oppositions. From these accounts, we can come to a few conclusions about postsocialist globalization that do not rely on received wisdom about what "progress," "civil society" and "capitalism" are supposed to be like in this region or elsewhere in the world.

Though their specific subject matters and approaches vary widely, the papers in this volume provide at least one collective conclusion: that "progress" is the source of much ambivalence for postsocialist citizens. Political, economic and social processes associated with globalization have produced contradictory, sometimes elusive, and often deeply conflicted ways of pursuing success and survival at all levels of postsocialist life. Concepts of nationhood, civil society, and civilization take shape in tandem with competing allegiances, fragile resource bases, and lingering socialist pasts both mourned and denigrated. Careful examinations such as those we present here of the contradictions that are emergent in the lives of particular groups and individuals, however, put us well on the road to formulating new analytical models that will do more justice to the particularities of postsocialist globalization. If the experiences of the region's professionals, activists, religious practitioners, and consumers seem to contradict and to exceed traditional definitions of "democracy,""capitalism" and "progress," it is out of these disjunctures that new frameworks for describing what is happening in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe begin to take form. The rest of the world's speculation about"what comes next?" after Socialism may be over; the conversation between post-socialist subjects and the rest of the world about what is happening has already begun.